As the left spent most of 2022 trying to hang former President Trump for an alleged trove of misplaced classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago, the White House has just revealed that at least a dozen “classified” documents from his time as VP have been recovered from a remote office of Joe Biden’s.
The cache of papers, including a “small number of documents with classified markings,” was discovered at the Penn Biden Center by the President’s personal attorneys on Nov. 2, according to Richard Saubel, special counsel to the White House.
The attorneys found the documents in a locked closet while preparing to vacate office space at the center, which the President used from mid-2017 until he began the 2020 campaign.
The National Archives were notified of the finding and took possession of the documents on Nov. 3, Saubel said.
“The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives,” Sauber said in a statement. “Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland swiftly appointed US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the matter, according to CBS News, which first reported on the documents’ discovery on Monday. Lausch is one of two remaining Trump-appointed US Attorneys. The other is Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who is leading an investigation into the President’s son, Hunter Biden.
Biden himself slammed former President Trump last year after FBI agents seized approximately 300 classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
“How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible? And I thought what data was in there that would maybe compromise sources and methods?” the President told 60 Minutes. “And it just – totally irresponsible.”
Under the Presidential Records Act, all documents from a president’s administration and staff must be turned over to the National Archives. Now, it seems that Biden is either just as guilty as Trump, or has given credence to the former President’s defense team’s claims that “these kinds of mistakes are common during transitions” and Mr. Trump did not do anything intentional or malicious.
“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “These documents were definitely not declassified.”
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said that he would send a letter to the National Archives and White House counsel seeking information about the documents that were seized from the Penn Biden Center.
“Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and National Archives have made compliance with the Presidential Records Act a top priority,” Comer said in a statement. “We expect the same treatment for President Biden, who has apparently inappropriately maintained classified documents in an insecure setting for several years.”
On the other hand, House Democrats quickly took to Biden’s defense.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar defended Biden’s handling of classified documents discovered stored at the Penn Biden Center and called GOP outrage “Republican hypocrisy.”
“This is Republican hypocrisy in its finest,” Aguilar, D-Calif., said in a press conference Tuesday with party leadership collages.
“We’re going to support the fact that the president is following this established protocol, that he did the right thing….” Aguilar said. He accused his colleagues across the aisle of not wanting to conduct “meaningful” oversight and that they are “just interested in opposing this president.”