Aides to President Joe Biden found another classified document in a separate location from the Washington office he used after serving as vice president, NBC News and the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The documents were discovered after an initial batch of classified material was found by Biden’s lawyers in a locked cabinet at the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center office. The White House said the document was returned within hours to the National Archives, but the contents and fate of the second document are unclear.
It is also unclear when the second group was discovered, or if it represents the totality of the classified material that appears to have been removed when Biden completed his term as vice president. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment.
Earlier Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly refused to answer questions about what efforts the administration had made to ensure that all classified materials had been found, or whether Biden’s homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth, Delaware, had been searched. He also refused to answer why lawyers were involved in packing Biden’s Central office.
At a press conference in Mexico City on Tuesday, Biden said he was shocked to learn that classified documents had been found in his office.
“But I don’t know what’s in the document,” added the president.
Jean-Pierre, pointing to the Justice Department’s investigation, also declined to answer questions about why the White House waited months to acknowledge the first findings — and only did so after the CBS News report.
“I understand the question, but there is still a process going on,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “It’s under review by the Department of Justice. If it’s appropriate for us to say more, we will.
Republican lawmakers have questioned the decision to delay disclosure of the findings, suggesting a political motivation and pointing out that the documents were discovered by Biden’s lawyers less than a week before the November midterm elections.
“Why Didn’t the ‘Justice’ Department Release the Highly Classified Documents Found in Biden’s Office Before the Election?” former President Donald Trump said in a post to the social media network this week.
Trump is under criminal investigation by the Justice Department over classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort after his deputy allegedly told the government he no longer had classified material.
The revelation that Biden also kept classified materials has complicated Trump’s politics, although Democrats have defended the current president by noting that his representative immediately returned the material when it was discovered.
While the different approaches taken by Trump and Biden make it difficult for Republicans to create equality, the string of revelations still raises difficult questions for the White House.
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