Lawyers for President Biden discovered a number of classified documents that were stored in a former office of the Penn Biden Center, a D.C.-based think tank. The documents — which dated back to Biden’s time as vice president — were found by the attorneys on November 2, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said according to CBS News.
CBS News reported that about 10 documents were found and were simply returned without incident. Their level of classification has not been reported, though CBS did note that a source stated that they did not contain “nuclear secrets.”
The source was referring to a long-debunked claim that top-secret documents relating to nuclear weapons and other national security matters were recovered by the FBI during a raid on Mar-A-Lago.
As for the Biden documents, Merrick Garland’s FBI did not opt to raid the office building with a team of heavily armed agents, as was done for documents stored by former President Trump. Attorney General Garland has reportedly assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago, John Lausch, to an inquiry into the documents. The FBI will also participate in the inquiry, CBS News reported.
The inquiry is considered a “preliminary step” and Garland will have to decide whether further investigation is warranted.
Sauber confirmed that the documents were discovered on November 2, just before the pivotal midterm elections. On the day of the discovery of the classified material, Sauber said the White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives, which took possession of the documents the following morning. He added that the White House was cooperating with the National Archives and the Justice Department.
“The discovery of these documents was made by the President’s attorneys,” Sauber said. “The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives. Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”
In response to the news, former President Trump took a shot at Biden and asked when the FBI will be conducting a heavy-handed raid of his properties. “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday.
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