Aides to President Biden have uncovered at least one additional batch of classified documents in a different location from the Washington, D.C., think tank where the first set were discovered, according to multiple reports.
A source familiar with the situation told NBC News that Biden aides have been looking for more confidential records in other locations he used after approximately ten documents from Biden’s vice presidency were found at the Penn Biden Center. Fox News confirmed NBC’s reporting. The aides have reportedly been scouring for classified documents at other sites where they might have mistakenly ended up, NBC said.
Biden’s attorneys came across the first batch of documents in a locked office while they were cleaning out office space at the think tank, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, told CBS News. Biden used the nonprofit headquarters as a private office between the end of his tenure as vice president to the start of his 2020 election campaign.
All presidential and vice-presidential records must be transferred to the National Archives under the Presidential Records Act.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Attorney General Merrick Garland had charged a U.S. attorney with investigating the first batch of records, which the National Archives has since acquired.
After the news of the second bunch of documents broke, Republican Senator Josh Hawley quickly tweeted: “special counsel.”
Garland tapped U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to determine how the first set of records ended up at Penn Biden Center. Following the review, which is expected to yield a report, Garland can appoint a special counsel to escalate the investigation if warranted.
The Biden document discoveries come after the FBI raided with a search warrant former president Donald Trump’s Florida home months ago on the grounds that he mishandled documents the government claimed as its property and that should have been delivered to the National Archives.
During a September appearance on “60 Minutes,” Biden said of the trove of records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago: “How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible. And it just — totally irresponsible.”