US President Joe Biden expressed his surprise at the secret government documents discovered in his private office and promised “full cooperation” with the investigation. He did not know what the content of the documents was, said Biden on Tuesday (local time) on the sidelines of the North America summit in Mexico City. All documents were handed over to the National Archives.
On Monday (local time) it became public that Biden had kept secret documents from his time as US Vice President Barack Obama in his private offices in the Penn Biden Center in the US capital Washington. Biden continued to use the premises after his tenure ended. Biden confirmed that when clearing out the office, his lawyers found a box with documents in a “locked box”, which also included secret documents.
These are reportedly 10 confidential documents, some with the highest level of classification. According to CNN, these include papers from the US secret service on other countries such as Ukraine, Iran or Great Britain.
As the White House announced, the documents were found on November 2nd and handed over to the National Archives. They were not the subject of an earlier request from the archive. In the United States, government documents generally need to be archived and preserved for posterity. The Justice Department is investigating the case.
The find is particularly explosive because Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump also kept secret government documents after his term in office and was therefore targeted by the investigators. In the summer, the federal police FBI seized thousands of documents in Trump’s private home Mar-a-Lago in the state of Florida. Investigations against Trump have been going on for months. The ex-president could have made himself punishable by doing so. Biden had criticized Trump’s behavior in September as “irresponsible”.