What did Biden say about the Trump classified documents?
Classified material has been found at Biden’s Wilmington residence in an embarrassing turn of events for the President.
President Biden faces more awkward questions after another batch of classified documents was found at his personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware. The case bears certain similarities to that of Donald Trump, although the former President’s team resisted initial attempts to return the documents and the scale of the Mar-A-Lago breach was far greater.
Nonetheless, some are wondering how Biden’s response now compares to his comments when Trump was found to have mishandled sensitive documents.
Back in August, after an FBI search of Mar-A-Lago yielded hundreds of classified documents, Biden gently mocked Trump’s claim that, as President, he could declassify documents just by thinking about it.
Speaking to reporters at the White House last August, Biden joked: “I just want you to know I’ve declassified everything in the world. I’m President, I can do – c’mon…”
At the time he refused to pass judgement on his predecessor, saying: “I’m not going to comment because I don’t know the details. I don’t even want to know. I’ll let the Justice Department take that.”
“It depends on the circumstance – for example, I have in my home a cabined-off space that is completely secure,” Biden said back in August. “It depends on the documents and it depends on how secure everything is.”
What documents have been found at Biden’s house?
On Saturday the White House announced that an additional five pages of classified material had been found at Biden’s Wilmington residence. This cache takes the total number of documents found to ten.
“We have now publicly released specific details about the documents identified, how they were identified, and where they were found,” said Richard Sauber, the White House special counsel. “The White House will cooperate with the newly-appointed Special Counsel.”
Sauber attended Biden’s residence on Thursday to collect the documents and transfer them to the Department of Justice as part of the ongoing investigation. But while at the residence “five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it,” Sauber explained.
This underlines the key difference between the respective investigations into Biden and Trump.
Biden’s own team were the ones who discovered the classified documents and they immediately took steps to advise the Justice Department of the oversight. The documents have been transferred to investigators involved in the case and Biden’s camp are cooperating fully with investigations.
In stark contrast, National Archives agency sent numerous requests for Trump’s team to submit the materials voluntarily after discovering that some from his time in the White House were not accounted for.
Federal officials then issued a subpoena for these documents to be returned. When these requests where ignored, the FBI launched a raid of Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate and found 15 boxes of classified material, totalling roughly 300 individual documents.
It is the lengthy battle over the documents, during which Trump’s team were clearly aware of their existence, that could land the former President in hot water with investigators.