On Tuesday, President Biden disclosed that he did not know exactly what documents were found as he was surprised during the briefing to know that any government records had been taken to that particular office.
During the North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico Biden also said that he had previously been advised not to inquire about the content of these documents.
Biden’s special counsel confirmed in a statement that the documents have been retrieved from Biden’s office at the University of Pennsylvania. Biden had been in that office from 2017 till 2019, leaving shortly after he announced his presidential campaign. As soon as Biden’s lawyers located the documents they immediately took the necessary steps by contacting the Archives who then retrieved the documents the following day. Since then the documents have been placed under the care of the Justice Department which will handle reviewing the documents and deciding how they will proceed with this case.
Biden disclosed to reporters that the documents had been found in a locked cabinet or closet and that for some reason the classified documents were put in a box that should not have contained any classified documents. Biden also added his confidence that people knew how seriously he took the handling of classified documents and information.
The documents were first discovered in November, only a few days before the midterm election, but the announcement of the discovery was not made until last Monday.
Many have compared the discovery to the case of the Mar-a-Lago classified documents, however those two cases are significantly different both in the number of documents found and in the way that they were found.
