“I regret nothing”
Biden shows no remorse after finding secret documents
1/20/2023 8:04 am
The US President has recently been criticized for his style of communication in the affair of the secret documents. Now he also announces that he does not regret his handling of the documents. The White House is on the defensive in the face of the explosive finds.
US President Joe Biden has no regrets about his handling of classified documents found in his home and former office. “I have no regrets. We are fully cooperating and look forward to clearing things up quickly,” he told reporters in California. He followed the instructions of his lawyers after “a handful of documents” were filed in the wrong place. According to Biden, the documents were immediately transferred to the National Archives. These are documents from his tenure as Vice President during the presidency of Barack Obama.
The White House has been largely on the defensive since the classified files were discovered on January 9th. Shortly after the find, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed former US Attorney Robert Hur as a special counsel. Biden and his lawyers have acknowledged the files they found. His adviser Richard Sauber said: “We are confident that a thorough review will reveal that these documents were inadvertently misplaced and that the President and his lawyers acted immediately upon discovering this error.”
Biden and the White House have recently been heavily criticized for their communication policy in the case. After the last find, spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre consistently avoided inquiries from reporters and stuck to the same formulations – such as that the President takes dealing with secret documents very seriously and that she could not say anything more about the case because of the ongoing investigations. The White House only informed the public two days after the discovery.
Biden once criticized Trump for the same offense
For the president, the revelations are politically very sensitive – not only because it is not allowed to store confidential government documents privately after leaving office, because in the USA the national archive is responsible for this. The finding of documents at Biden is also very explosive because former Republican President Donald Trump caused a scandal with a similar case in the summer: after leaving the White House, Trump kept large amounts of confidential government documents in his private estate in Florida , including a number of top-secret documents. The FBI searched the property in August and confiscated various classified documents.
Biden criticized Trump’s handling of the documents at the time. Now he himself is being subjected to severe criticism from Trump and his Republicans. They have now taken over the majority in the House of Representatives and have already initiated the first parliamentary investigations into Biden’s documents.