As the discoveries accumulate, the embarrassment grows for Joe Biden. Five additional pages of confidential documents, which date from the period of the vice-presidency of Mr. Biden (2009-2017), were found in a room adjacent to the garage of the family home of the president of the United States, in Wilmington ( Delaware), Presidential Counsel Richard Sauber said Saturday, January 14.
These pages were found Thursday evening during the visit of Mr. Sauber, specifies the lawyer in a press release. Mr. Sauber explains that he supervised the transmission to justice of a first set of confidential documents, found on the spot earlier in the week. He recalls that while searching the president’s home on Wednesday, the president’s personal lawyers had already found, in the same room, a page marked as a confidential document.
Not having the necessary authorizations to consult this type of document, Mr. Biden’s lawyers did not push their research and warned the Ministry of Justice, specifies the adviser to the White House. So Mr. Sauber discovered these other five pages. The representatives of the Ministry of Justice who accompanied him ” at once “ took possession.
An independent investigation opened
In addition to the files found in Wilmington, classified documents dating from Barack Obama’s presidency were discovered in November at the Penn Biden Center, a Washington think tank where Mr. Biden once had an office.
All of the classified documents found have been handed over to the Department of Justice, the White House said on Thursday, assuring that it “will continue to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s investigation”.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed an independent prosecutor to lead the investigation. ” I signed a document appointing Robert Hur as special prosecutor” who “authorizes it to investigate any person or entity that may have violated the law” in this case, he said during a speech on Thursday.
If the White House communicated without delay about the files found in Wilmington, it only recognized on Monday the discovery of those who were in Washington, two months after the revelations.
The case is politically delicate for Mr. Biden, as he plans to run again. Despite many differences on the merits of the case, she recalls that former President Donald Trump is also under investigation for having taken official documents to his Florida residence. The Republicans are thus trying to use the comparison to whitewash the former president.
One of the fundamental differences between the two cases, however, lies in the desire of Mr. Trump and his lawyers to conceal and remove these documents from the National Archives, which justified the appointment of a special adviser, Jack Smith, by the Minister of Justice. Today, Mr. Trump and the Republicans claim he had the authority as president to declassify the documents taken away. However, no trace of declassification was found.