WASHINGTON Attorneys for the President of the US, Joe BidenHe discovered “a small number” of confidential documents in the former office of the President in Washington, the reported White House As of this Monday, the 9th, the documents date back to when Biden was the country’s vice president while he was in office Barack Obamaand were found by their personal attorneys in November last year.
The discovery brings to light the Justice Department’s investigation into the former president. donald trump for taking hundreds of classified documents from the White House after his administration ended. Despite other circumstances, the discovery of the documents in Biden’s possession will complicate a possible prosecution of Trump from a political perspective.
In a statement, the White House said the National Archives and Records Administration was notified the same day the documents were found and they were delivered the next day. The Justice Department was also asked to determine how the lawyers should proceed. The nature of the information contained in the papers and the level of secrecy were not disclosed.
:quality(80)/cloudfrontuseast1.images.arcpublishing.com/estadao/A3VHIH4WSRGUHP6X2WZGDXEAXU.jpg "Biden lawyers find confidential US documents in former office 3")
President Joe Biden before his departure for Mexico City this Monday, May 9. Attorneys for the Democrat found classified documents in his old office Photo: Andrew Harnik / AP
The discovery was not a response to a previous request for the files, nor is there any evidence that Biden or his team resisted efforts to retrieve these or other classified documents.
Senior Justice Department officials hired John Lausch Jr., a Trumpappointed prosecutor, to investigate the matter, according to two sources familiar with the decision. The White House said it was cooperating with the department.
Trump, who is under criminal investigation for taking hundreds of confidential documents to one of his private properties after leaving the White House and refusing to return them all after a government subpoena, used the news to poke fun at the FBI’s situation to make a search and arrest against him in August last year. “When will the FBI raid Joe Biden’s many homes, maybe even the White House?” he wrote on his own social network, Truth Social.
While Trump has attempted to draw a parallel, the circumstances of the documents in Biden’s possession described so far differ significantly. According to the White House, Biden has not been investigated for handling classified documents, nor has he, like Trump, refused to release them. “The documents were not the subject of any previous inquiry or inquiry from the archives,” Richard Sauber, the White House special counsel, wrote in the statement. “Since this discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have been working with the archives and the Justice Department to ensure that all ObamaBiden administration documents are properly in the archives.”
On the other hand, in 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration repeatedly asked Trump to turn over a large number of documents it claimed were missing. The former president resisted the request for months, and then in early 2022 allowed archives officials to take away 15 boxes of material, including dozens of classified documents, but it was later found to contain more.
The Justice Department obtained a subpoena for classified documents still in Trump’s possession. An attorney for the former president handed over more papers, saying they were the last. An FBI operation discovered that there were 103 other documents marked classified that had been stolen from the White House along with thousands of other official records.
Trump is under investigation for obstruction and possible violation of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes willfully withholding national security documents and failing to “deliver them on demand” to a government official who can take them into custody. /NEW YORK TIMES