Discovery of more classified records raises questions over Biden’s handling of documents

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s aides found a new batch of classified documents at a second location associated with Biden, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday – a disclosure, the second in three days, that is sure to intensify Republican attacks.

It is not clear where or when the records were recovered. But Biden’s aides have been scouring various places since November, when his lawyers discovered a handful of classified files, which included briefing materials on foreign countries, when they were closing a think tank office in Washington. The Justice Department is reviewing the discovery to determine how to proceed.

Republicans relished in the new revelations, accusing Biden of hypocrisy in calling former President Donald Trump irresponsible for hoarding sensitive documents at his private club and residence in Florida. This week, the new Republican chair of the House oversight committee issued a far-ranging request to the National Archives and Records Administration, which is supposed to receive all highly sensitive materials after an administration leaves office, for documents and correspondence.

A White House spokesperson and a member of Biden’s legal team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Tuesday, Biden told reporters in Mexico City that he was “surprised” to learn in November that his lawyers found classified government documents in his former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

He said his staff had fully cooperated with the National Archives and the Justice Department.

A day later, NBC News reported that another cache had been found at a different, undisclosed location.

Under government regulations, access to classified documents is limited to people who are currently authorized to see them, and the materials must be stored in special security containers to limit the risk of exposing sensitive information. The Presidential Records Act says official documents in the White House – classified and unclassified alike – should be turned over to the National Archives when an administration departs.

After Trump left office, officials with the archives identified sensitive documents that had not been returned, prompting numerous appeals for their return. The matter was eventually referred to the Justice Department, which ultimately requested the search warrant that yielded the recovery of classified materials, including some bearing the most restrictive top-secret markings.

By contrast, the first set of documents found by Biden’s lawyers was voluntarily returned to the archives in November and had not been logged as missing. It is not clear if the archives had flagged the new materials.

A spokesperson for the archives declined to comment.

The discovery of the second batch of material raises new questions about the handling of sensitive documents by a Biden team that has prided itself for adhering to norms and rules flouted by his predecessor.

But the circumstances of the two cases appear to be strikingly different. Unlike Trump, who resisted months of government requests to return the records stored at Mar-a-Lago and failed to fully comply with a subpoena, Biden’s team appears to have acted swiftly and in accordance with the law, immediately summoning officials with the National Archives to retrieve the files. The archives then alerted the Justice Department, according to the White House.

“After I was briefed about the discovery, I was surprised to learn that there are any government records that were taken to that office,” Biden said in Mexico.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, refused to address the issue of the documents, saying it would be inappropriate to comment on a matter under review by the Justice Department.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose time in office has been largely defined by investigations of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the documents case, assigned the preliminary phase of the Biden inquiry to John R. Lausch Jr., the U.S. attorney in Chicago, a holdover from the Trump administration.