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The US Department of Justice is reviewing a trove of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office of former President Joe Biden’s agency, the White House said Monday.
Special adviser to the president Richard Sauber said that “a small number of documents with classified marks” were found when Biden’s personal lawyer cleaned the Penn Biden Center office, where the president kept his office after he left the vice presidency in 2017. until shortly before launching the 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The document was found on November 2, 2022, in a “locked cupboard” in the office, Sauber said.
Sauber said the lawyers immediately alerted the White House Counsel’s office, which notified the National Archives and Records Administration — which took custody of the documents the next day.
“Since the discovery, the President’s personal attorney has been cooperating with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that the records of the Obama-Biden Administration are consistent with the Archives,” Sauber said.
A person familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss publicly said Attorney General Merrick Garland asked US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the matter after the Archives referred to the problem for the department.
Trump, Republicans weigh in
Lausch is one of the top U.S. attorneys on hold from former president Donald Trump’s administration.
Regardless of the review of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the revelation that Biden potentially mishandled classified records or the president could prove to be a political headache for the president, who called Trump’s decision to keep hundreds of these records in his private club in Florida “irresponsible.”
Trump weighed in on Monday on his social media site, asking, “When is the FBI going to raid a lot of Joe Biden’s homes, maybe the White House?”
The revelation comes as Republicans have taken control of the US House of Representatives and vowed to launch an investigation into the Biden administration.
It could also complicate the Justice Department’s deliberations on whether to prosecute Trump, who has launched a repeat bid for the White House in 2024 and has repeatedly claimed that the department’s investigation into his own conduct was “corrupt.”
Rep. James Comer, the new Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Friday that the revelation raised questions about the Justice Department’s handling of the Trump investigation.
“Is the White House going to be invaded tonight? Are they going to attack the Bidens?” asked the reporter. “It’s more concerning that there’s a two-tier system of justice at the DOJ in terms of how it treats Republicans versus Democrats, certainly how it treats former presidents versus current presidents.”
The National Archives did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. A message seeking comment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago was not immediately returned Monday.
CBS first reported on the discovery of the classified documents. The think tank where the documents were found, officially known as the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and continues to operate independently of the Biden administration.
The Justice Department has spent months investigating the retention of approximately 300 documents marked as classified and recovered from Trump’s Florida estate. In that case, prosecutors said, Trump’s representatives refused requests to turn over all classified documents and failed to comply with subpoenas demanding their return.
FBI agents in August served a search warrant on the Mar-a-Lago property, removing 15 boxes of records.
The investigation was led by special counsel Jack Smith. Prosecutors have interviewed various Trump associates and used a grand jury to hear evidence.
It is unclear when a decision will be made on whether Trump, or anyone else, should be indicted.
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