Biden’s lawyers find classified US documents in the former office

Washington – Chief Attorneys weAnd Joe Bidendiscovered a “small number” of classified documents in the president’s former office in Washington, The Guardian reports. White House This Monday 9. The documents date back to when Biden was vice president of the country, during the administration Barack Obamaand was found in November last year by their personal lawyers.

The discovery sheds light on the Justice Department’s investigations against the former president. Donald Trump to take it from the White House Hundreds of secret documents after the end of his government. Although the circumstances are different, the discovery of documents in Biden’s possession will make Trump’s potential trial more difficult from a political point of view.

The White House said in a statement that the National Archives and Records Administration was notified the same day the documents were found and turned over the next day. The Ministry of Justice has also been asked to define how lawyers should operate. The type of information contained in the papers and the level of classification were not disclosed.

The discovery was not in response to any previous requests for the files, and there is no indication that Biden or his team has resisted efforts to retrieve these files or any other classified documents.

And senior Justice Department officials have assigned John Lauch Jr., Trump’s attorney general, to investigate the matter, according to two sources familiar with the decision. The White House said it was cooperating with the department.

Trump, who is under criminal investigation for taking hundreds of classified documents to one of his private properties after leaving the White House and refusing to return them all after a government subpoena, seized on the news to mock the FBI’s position, Who conducted a search and seizure against him in August last year. On his private social network, Truth Social, he wrote: “When are the FBI going to raid Joe Biden’s many homes, maybe even the White House?”

While Trump has tried to make a comparison, the circumstances of the documents in Biden’s possession, as described thus far, are dramatically different. According to the White House, Biden was not under search for handling classified documents, nor did he refuse to turn them over, like Trump. “The documents have not been the subject of any previous request or inquiry from the archives,” Richard Sauber, the White House special counsel, wrote in the statement. “Since this discovery, the president’s personal attorneys have collaborated with the Archives Department and the Department of Justice on a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden administration documents are properly in the archive’s possession.”

On the other hand, in 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration repeatedly asked Trump to turn over a large number of documents it claimed were missing. The former president resisted the request for several months, then allowed archive officials to take away 15 boxes of material in early 2022, including dozens of classified documents, but it later turned out to contain more.

The Justice Department has obtained a court subpoena regarding classified documents still in Trump’s possession. The former president’s lawyer handed over more papers and declared them the last. An FBI operation discovered that there were 103 other documents marked classified that were taken from the White House, along with thousands of other official records.

Trump is under investigation for possible obstruction and violation of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes knowingly withholding national security documents and failing to “turn them on demand” to a government official who could take custody of them. / The New York Times