WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden appeared to blame Wednesday how classified documents ended up at his Delaware home and Washington office on staff packing up the contents of his vice presidential office.
“But one of the things that happened is that what wasn’t done right is that when they packed up my offices to move, they didn’t do the kind of work that should have been done, go through every piece of literature. that’s there,» Biden said in an interview with PBS on Wednesday. «But I’ll let the investigation decide what’s going on. And we’ll see what happens.»
In November, classified documents were found in an office that Biden had used between the time he left office at the end of the Obama administration and when he launched his 2020 presidential campaign. Since that discovery was made public in January, more have been found. documents at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
The White House has said that the president is fully cooperating with the investigation into how the documents got out of a secure location.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has since appointed special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of the documents.
The discoveries have created a political maelstrom for Biden, particularly after Democrats criticized former President Donald Trump for his possession of classified documents, hundreds of which were found on his Florida property after the FBI executed a search warrant.
Republicans say the two men have been treated differently, pointing to a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property as evidence where a large number of documents with sensitive markings were seized. Democrats argue there is a key difference: Biden is not trying to hide documents and has cooperated with authorities, while the FBI’s search for Trump’s Florida property came after months of government efforts to recover the material.
Biden reiterated that message in his interview on Wednesday, saying that «no one has ever had to threaten to do anything» and that he «willingly opened every opening I have — the house, the offices, everything — he’ll come and look and spend hours looking in my home, I invited them.»