A «small number of documents» with classified markings that appear to be from the Obama administration were found in a Washington, D.C., think tank linked to President Joe Biden and are being reviewed by the Justice Department and the National Archives, a White House lawyer. he said Monday.
The documents were discovered in a locked cabinet by Biden’s lawyers days before the midterms as they prepared to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, said Richard Sauber, special adviser to the president on a statement.
A source familiar with the matter told NBC News that Biden only realized the classified documents were stored in his old office when his lawyers informed him they had been discovered.
CBS News first reported In the documents.
Sauber said the White House is cooperating with the Justice Department and the National Archives regarding the discovery of documents found in an office Biden used «periodically» from mid-2017 until the start of his 2020 presidential campaign.
«The White House is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice regarding the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records, including a small number of documents with classified marks,» Sauber said.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed that Attorney General Merrick Garland has asked U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John R. Lausch to look into the matter of how the classified material ended up at the Penn Biden Center. The review was intentionally assigned to Lausch, a Trump-appointed holdover, to avoid any conflict of interest, the source said.
According to Sauber, the classified material was discovered on November 2 by Biden’s personal attorneys, and the White House Attorney’s Office notified the National Archives, which took possession of the materials the next morning.
“The documents were not the subject of any prior request or investigation by the Archives,” Sauber said. «Since that discovery, the President’s personal lawyers have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are properly in the Archive’s possession.»
News of the found documents comes about five months after FBI agents executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The search uncovered more than 100 documents with classification marks, including some that were marked as top secret.
Last month, two more documents with classified markings were found in a Florida storage facility not far from Trump’s Palm Beach compound and turned over to the FBI.
Trump posted on his Truth Social account about the Penn Biden Center documents, saying, «When is the FBI going to raid Joe Biden’s many homes, maybe even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified.»
Rep. James Comer, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, told reporters Monday night that he plans to send a letter to the White House Attorney’s Office and the National Archives requesting information about the documents. related to Biden.
The Kentucky Republican added that, according to research conducted by his investigators after the Mar-a-Lago search, it was not uncommon for former presidents to accidentally leave office with classified documents.
Comer made it clear that he thought Biden was unlikely to do anything wrong by taking the documents, and that he was more concerned that Trump may have been treated unfairly.
“There are a lot of people in the United States who think there is a two-tier justice system in the United States. That there is a difference in the way Republicans and Democrats are treated,” Comer said.
After leaving office in January 2017, Biden was named the University of Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin Professor of Presidential Practice and director of its new think tank. The school formally opened a suite of offices for the center in February 2018, including an office for Biden’s personal use when he was in Washington.
During a 2018 interview after the formal opening of the offices, Biden told MSNBC: «I no longer have access to classified information.»
Biden did not respond to questions from reporters on Monday, ahead of a bilateral meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, about how classified documents were found in his private office.
Peter Alexander contributed.
