Secret documents from when he was vice president found in a private office of Biden | International

The lawyer for the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has reported the discovery of a small number of documents classified as confidential in a closet at the Penn Biden Center, a private office of the president. The documents have been made available to the National Archives and the situation is being reviewed by the Department of Justice. His discovery is a blow to the president and a breath of fresh air for his predecessor, Donald Trump, who took secret documents to his Mar-a-Lago (Florida) mansion, which was searched by the FBI in August past.

Trump has not taken long to react after the CBS chain has given the first news about the documents of the stage in which Biden was the vice president of Barack Obama. “When is the FBI going to raid Joe Biden’s many homes, maybe even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified ”, he has written on his social network, Truth Social. According to CBS, there are a dozen documents classified as confidential. US law requires that presidential records be retained and made available to the National Archives upon removal from office.

In an interview for the program 60 minutes Broadcast last September, the journalist asked the president what he thought when he saw the photograph of the secret documents seized at the Mar-a-Lago search. Biden replied: “How can that happen? How can someone be so irresponsible? And I thought: what data was there that could compromise the sources and the methods? I mean the names of the people who helped… And it’s just… it’s totally irresponsible.”

“The White House is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice in connection with the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records, including a small number of documents with classified marks,” Richard said in a statement. Sauber, special counsel to President Biden. The documents were discovered as the president’s personal attorneys were packing up files stored in a locked cabinet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank attached to the University of Pennsylvania in Washington.

Biden periodically used this space from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 presidential election campaign. Although it has not been disclosed until now, the documents were discovered on November 2, 2022, according to Sauber. That same day, the White House Office of the Legal Counsel notified the National Archives, which took possession of the materials the next morning.

“The discovery of these documents was made by the president’s lawyers. The documents were not the subject of any prior request or investigation by the Archives,” adds Sauber in what appears to be an attempt to distance himself from the papers seized from Trump. “Since that discovery, the president’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are properly in Archives’ possession,” he concludes.

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Biden smiled this afternoon in Mexico City, where he is on an official visit, without saying a word when asked if he had any comments to make about the documents.

Former President Donald Trump is under investigation by the Justice Department for secret papers he took to his Mar-a-Lago mansion and failed to return after persistent requests from the National Archives. The FBI searched his mansion with a court order citing the possible crimes for which he was being investigated. The possible crimes, which imply high jail sentences, would be obstruction of justice, intentional concealment, removal or mutilation of public documents and violations of the espionage law, apparently due to the intentional retention of national security documents.

The Justice Department, headed by Merrick Garland, the Biden-appointed attorney general, is keeping the investigation open. Republicans have accused Biden of partisan use of the federal government as a political weapon over that and other pending investigations into Trump. With the newly released majority in the House of Representatives, they intend to create an investigative commission to analyze the actions of the Department of Justice. Garland appointed Jack Smith as special prosecutor for Trump-related investigations.

The head of the Department of Justice has now commissioned the Chicago prosecutor to review the documents marked as classified that were found in the Penn Biden Center, according to CBS, which adds that the FBI is also involved in the prosecutor’s investigation. Chicago prosecutor John Lausch was appointed by Trump during his presidency and his appointment appears to seek an appearance of impartiality in the investigation. The other federal prosecutor from the Trump era who remains in office after the presidential replacement is the one from Delaware, in charge of the investigation into Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

In the case of the Trump papers, the National Archives insistently demanded the return of the documents that the former president had taken from the White House. After ignoring those requests, there was a requirement by decision of a grand jury. In response to it, Trump’s lawyers turned over nearly 40 classified documents. Investigators, however, had indications that presidential documents continued to be found at Mar-a-Lago. The judge ordered a search in which thousands of documents were found, including a hundred considered confidential or secret.

This resistance from Trump and his lawyers is what is likely to be considered obstruction of justice. Despite the legal differences between the two cases, it is a serious setback for Biden that puts Trump on a platter to air the thesis of political persecution.

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