President Biden on Tuesday responded to reports that a U.S. attorney was investigating classified documents from his vice presidency which were uncovered at a D.C. think tank affiliated with him, claiming he had no knowledge of them being there.
“Let me get rid of the easy one first,” Biden told reporters during the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City, where he is on a diplomatic trip to meet with Mexican and Canadian leaders. “People know I take classified documents and classified information seriously,” he said, the Associated Press reported.
“They did what they should have done. They immediately called the archives . . . turned them over to the archives, and I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office,” Biden said. “But I don’t know what’s in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were.”
The records were recovered on November 2 at the Penn Biden Center — an organization dedicated to “Diplomacy and Global Engagement” and named after the president — according to Richard Sauber, special counsel to the White House. Biden used the think tank as a private office for a few years after his vice-presidential tenure ended.
Attorney General Merrick Garland charged U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the roughly ten records and figure out how they ended up at the non-profit’s headquarters. Following the review, which is expected to yield a report, Garland can appoint a special counsel to escalate the probe if warranted.
Under the Presidential Records Act, all presidential and vice-presidential records must be transferred to the National Archives.
“The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives,” Sauber said Monday. “Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in the process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”
The Penn Biden Center situation comes after the FBI raided with a search warrant former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence 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 documented retrieved from Mar-a-Lago: “How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible. And it just — totally irresponsible.
Some Republicans have suggested that Biden is a hypocrite on the matter.
GOP Representative Andy Biggs alleged Monday in a tweet, “Biden stole classified documents and stored them at his think tank while he was VP. The VP does not have any authority to declassify classified documents. And this ‘think tank’ received $54 million in funding from the CCP.”
“This is a very serious crime. DOJ & NARA can’t sweep this under the rug AND persecute Trump,” GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton called out what appeared to be the Democrats’ application of a double standard in the Biden vs. Trump case: “Re. Biden and classified documents: there can’t be separate standards for Republicans and Democrats. The same rules must apply to everyone.”