Media: Biden advisors find more secret documents

The document affair that Joe Biden is dealing with is coming to a head. Attorneys for the current president have found secret government files at another location – after they found an envelope containing 10 documents while cleaning up a private office of Biden at a university institute in Washington in early November.

A “small number of additional documents” with classified information markings were discovered in a warehouse in the garage of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, the White House said on Thursday. Another document was discovered in an adjacent room between stored materials. No records were found at Biden’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. In this case, too, the Ministry of Justice was notified immediately.

An independent special investigator is now to investigate the finds. The announced Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday at a short-notice scheduled appearance in Washington.

Biden spokeswoman dodges questions

The first find is said to be documents from Biden’s tenure as Vice President Barack Obama. Biden kept them in private premises, which he moved into in 2018 – as the namesake of the Penn Biden Center think tank, which is part of the elite University of Pennsylvania.

In his only public statement to date, Biden said on Tuesday that he was “surprised” when his lawyers informed him about the find. “But I don’t know what the documents say.”

His spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre emphasized on Wednesday that Biden takes dealing with secret government files seriously. She also said that the president’s lawyers “did the right thing” when they found the documents. They immediately contacted the National Archives Authority, Nara, which is supposed to hold government files of resigned presidents and vice-presidents.

However, during the daily media conference in the White House, Jean-Pierre steadfastly refused to provide any further information about the affair – despite aggressive inquiries from the journalists present. For the time being, it remains unclear when Biden was informed about the find. Instead, Jean-Pierre said several times: “It’s an ongoing process.” The Ministry of Justice is currently investigating the matter and does not want to intervene in this process.

Call for another special investigator is loud

Attorney General Merrick Garland has yet to comment on his agency’s investigations. He has entrusted a prosecutor from Illinois who was once employed by Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump. Some Republicans are already calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor. Senator Josh Hawley, who is flirting with a presidential candidacy in 2024, published a statement on the short message service Twitter with the words “special counsel”.

Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith in mid-November to shed light on Trump’s document affair. Like Biden, he had taken secret government files with him when he retired. Unlike Biden, however, Trump refused to cooperate with the archives authority and the federal police FBI. Instead, he lied about the hoarded documents. Special Counsel Smith is also investigating the role Trump played in connection with the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol.

Biden worked for the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the full name of the think tank, in 2018 and 2019. The University of Pennsylvania appointed him Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor in February 2017 after his resignation as Vice President. He used a private office in a modern building in Washington, very close to the Capitol.

Between 2017 and spring 2019, the start of his (ultimately successful) presidential campaign, Biden also worked for the Biden Cancer Initiative, which is headquartered in Washington. He is also the namesake of an institute at the University of Delaware, his alma mater. It is said that he was a frequent guest on the campus in Newark (Delaware). Biden also owns homes near Wilmington, Delaware and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.