Biden team informs DOJ of third classified document discovery
Ryan King
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President Joe Biden’s personal counsel informed the Justice Department of a third classified document discovery Thursday morning.
The finding came at Biden’s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware, and follows two other classified batches from his vice presidential days that were flagged last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed Thursday.
WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL REVEALS LOCATION OF SECOND BATCH OF BIDEN’S CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS
“This morning, President Joe Biden’s personal counsel called [the DOJ] and stated that an additional document bearing classified markings was identified at the president’s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware,” Garland said during a press conference.
Garland made the disclosure during a press conference in which he announced the appointment of former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to serve as special counsel and oversee an inquiry into whether Biden mishandled classified documents. He did not provide more specifics on the nature of that document.
So far, there have been at least three distinct classified document discoveries. The first came on Nov. 2 of last year, while a Biden lawyer was clearing out a closet in the president’s old office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a foreign policy-focused think tank. Biden “periodically used this space from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 campaign,” according to White House counsel Richard Sauber.
The lawyers flagged an envelope that contained roughly 10 documents that had classification markings and included intelligence about Iran, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom dated from 2013 to 2016, CNN reported. The documents also included “sensitive compartmented information.” The White House publicly disclosed that discovery earlier this week following a media report.
After the initial discovery, Biden’s team initiated a sweep of the president’s personal Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, residences. The Rehoboth Beach search yielded no additional material, but the Wilmington hunt elicited the discovery of a second batch of documents. Biden’s team notified the DOJ of that finding on Dec. 20, according to Garland, but the public didn’t learn about it until Wednesday.
Sauber claimed that the search Biden’s team initiated concluded Wednesday evening.
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Biden has insisted that he has been “cooperating fully” with federal investigators. He previously lambasted former President Donald Trump, who has been mired in a classified document scandal of his own. Over 300 documents with classified markings were recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last year. Trump has returned fire on Biden over his fresh controversy.
Presidents and vice presidents are supposed to relinquish White House material to the National Archives and Records Administration in keeping with the Presidential Records Keeping Act.
The Washington Examiner contacted the DOJ for additional information.