Biden 'surprised' by discovery of classified documents found in his private office
Congressional Republicans have promised an investigation of the episode at the Biden Penn Center for Democracy & Global Engagement in Washington, where the president’s lawyers say a small number of classified documents were discovered.
President Joe Biden said he was surprised that classified documents were discovered in an office he used before he was elected. Biden said he does not know what’s in the documents, but that he believed they were handled properly by his lawyers. “We’re cooperating fully,” he said Tuesday at a news conference in Mexico City with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“People know I take classified documents, classified information seriously,” he said. “I was briefed about this discovery, and surprised to learn that there are any government records that were taken there to that office.”
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Congressional Republicans have promised an investigation of the episode at the Biden Penn Center for Democracy & Global Engagement in Washington, where the president’s lawyers say a small number of classified documents were discovered Nov. 2 in a locked closet. The records were reported to the National Archives the same day, which took possession of them the next morning, according to the White House.
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“They did what they should have done: They immediately called the archives — immediately call the archives, turned them over to the archives,” Biden said on Tuesday.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has asked the Trump-appointed US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, John Lausch, to review the incident. Biden said he hopes the review “will be finished soon.”
Biden criticized former President Donald Trump as “totally irresponsible” after the FBI searched Mar—a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, last August and seized about 20 boxes of government documents that included 11 sets of classified materials, according to an unsealed affidavit.
