The US President promises “full cooperation” with the judiciary in the investigation. However, he does not know what is in the documents that were discovered in his former office.
US President Joe Biden is trying to limit the damage after secret documents were found in his former private office. During his visit to Mexico City, he said he was “surprised” that the documents had even been brought to the office. At the same time, he promised “full cooperation” in the investigation. Biden continued to explain that he did not know what was in the documents.
The politically explosive find puts the president in a difficult position to explain. On Monday it became public that Biden had kept secret documents from his time as US Vice President under then-President Barack Obama in his private offices in the Penn Biden Center in the capital Washington. Biden used the rooms after he left the office of Vice President in 2017 until around 2020, according to the White House.
The files are reported to include at least 10 top-secret documents, some of which are top-class classified. According to CNN, these include US secret service papers on other countries such as Ukraine, Iran and Great Britain. The White House also announced that the documents had already been found on November 2 when clearing out Biden’s offices.
The news broke during Biden’s first trip abroad of the new year. The US President traveled to Mexico for political talks with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At first he was silent on questions about the find. Only at a joint press conference with López Obrador and Trudeau did he finally declare himself. Biden confirmed his attorneys found a box containing the documents in a “locked cupboard” while cleaning out the office and immediately turned them over to the National Archives. Biden did not say why the incident was only now known. People know he takes classified information very seriously, Biden said. His lawyers had also reacted perfectly correctly by immediately informing the National Archives.
Republicans criticize Biden
The find is delicate, because his predecessor Donald Trump caused a scandal with a similar case in the summer. When he left the White House, Trump took government documents with him to his private estate Mar-a-Lago in Florida on a grand scale, including a number of top-secret documents. The Federal Police FBI searched the property in Florida in August and confiscated various classified documents. Attorney General Merrick Garland, appointed by Biden, appointed a special investigator to clarify whether Trump may have committed a criminal offense.
In the United States, government documents generally need to be archived and preserved for posterity. Many Republicans are already calling for the same to apply to Biden. Several MPs took the revelation as an opportunity to sharply criticize Biden. “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” said Republican Congressman Don Bacon, referring to Biden’s criticism of Trump in an interview in September. Biden described his predecessor’s behavior as “irresponsible”.