Peeling Back the Layers of the Penn Biden Center Document Scandal

The sketchy relationship between Biden and the University of Pennsylvania should have been scrutinized much earlier.

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President Joe Biden delivers remarks during a ceremony marking two years since the January 6, 2021, attack on U.S. Capitol at the White House in Washington, D.C., January 6, 2023.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

The batch of classified documents recently discovered in President Joe Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., were taken from the office of the vice president, the position that Biden was about to relinquish, in 2017. This discovery presents more complicated problems than is generally known.

Joe Biden should have been a lot more careful in making sure that nothing left his vice-presidential office that he was not allowed to take. When documents in question are marked “classified,” there is no mistaking it: The tell-tale red, orange, and blue folders that hold them make it obvious. These files matter not just because they were classified (as protecting all classified information is vital to our national security) but because of where they were kept.

RP

About the Author

Richard W. Painter

Richard W. Painter is a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and was the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.

JP

About the Author

John Pudner

John Pudner is president of TakeBackAction.org.

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