Ron Klain, the outgoing White House chief of staff, defended President Joe Biden amid controversy over classified documents found at Biden’s Delaware home and former office in recent weeks.
Klain spoke to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday, saying the Biden administration has been “fully cooperating” with the Justice Department after the president’s personal attorney last month discovered some classified documents in his private office dating back to his time as vice president. Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the National Archives after the first set of files were discovered and turned over a day later.
Classified files have since been discovered at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, creating a storm among Republican lawmakers who compared the revelation to the removal of secret files from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida.
Klain said on Wednesday that the episode was very different, pointing to Trump’s repeated attempts to stonewall investigators and his refusal to hand over classified files he brought with him when he left the White House.
“The key to handling this is the cooperation with the Department of Justice, with the Archives, in the beginning to understand,” Klain said. “They didn’t ask for documents from us. The president and his legal team said, hey, we found some of these documents.
“It is obviously very different from the approach that Donald Trump has taken, where he has basically stonewalled the government, required search warrants, asked for these documents, refused to turn them over,” added Klain. “In our case, we identified the document, made it available to the appropriate authorities and turned it over as soon as we found it.”
FBI agents conducted a “premeditated search” of a home in Rehoboth, Delaware, on Wednesday, saying later they found no classified material. Officials at the DOJ said that investigators
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate the handling of the file after Biden ended his term as vice president. The president has maintained that he will continue to cooperate with investigators.
“I think you’ll find there’s nothing to it,” he said last month. “It’s not there.”
A separate investigation into Trump’s handling of government documents is underway.