The White House has confirmed that the US President’s lawyers Joe Bidenfound another 5 documents classified in Delaware from his time as Vice President. His press department insists they have always acted with “the utmost transparency” and they avoid going further.
“The independence of the Justice Department has been restored. That’s what we’re telling you here when we say we’re referring you to the Justice Department … which restores independence when it comes to matters like this. And that’s important to the President. And he was consistent. What I’m saying about the investigation has been consistent for two years now. And you’ve heard me over and over again when it comes to a legal question or any such matter that we have always relates to the Department of Justice. So there’s nothing else here,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary.
The law requires that all records of the President be released to the National Archives after term, in Biden’s case after his tenure as vice president, but possession of these in itself is not a crime unless it can be shown that they were knowingly withheld.
In Biden’s case, it was his own lawyers who told authorities they had found classified documents.
But in Trump’s case, they were discovered after the search, motivated by a request from the National Archives (which is responsible for storing all presidential documents) as they were trying to recover records the former president had taken to his personal residence for more than one Year.
Despite the differences, Republicans have attempted to equate both situations and will no doubt seek to politically capitalize on the crisis this event will bring to the 80-year Biden administration.
“How many more classified documents will you find in Joe Biden’s house?” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee said in a social media message today.
All of this comes a day after they sent a letter to Garland to announce that they will be overseeing Special Attorney Hur’s investigation and the investigations being conducted to date.
“We are monitoring the Department of Justice’s actions regarding former Vice President Biden’s misuse of classified information, including the apparent unauthorized possession of classified information in a private office in Washington, DC, and in the garage of his Wilmington home,” the statement said letter signed by the chairman of that committee, Jim Jordan, Congressman from Ohio.
In the letter, they ask Garland to turn over a number of documents related to the Biden investigation by Jan. 27, noting that the documents were discovered just before the election.
And although the case was unknown until this week, it was on November 4, four days before the midterm elections, when the Office of the Inspector General of the National Archives contacted the Justice Department and informed it that the White House had found classified documents