Summary:
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Following the discovery of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump made similar claims, emphasizing that his resort was guarded by the Secret Service and that he had secured the door through which the data were stored.
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In a press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) referred to the newly discovered records as “another faux pas by the Biden administration,” drawing a comparison to how Trump was treated during the Mar-a-Lago search.
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And now we discover it, exactly as the vice president kept it exposed for years in various places, “The Presidential Records Act said that all of Biden’s and Trump’s records had to be given to the National Archives and Records Administration when they left office.
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Biden’s lawyers told the DOJ about the new documents, and the Biden administration seems to have worked with the DOJ.
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In contrast, the White House claims that just a “limited number” of classified materials have been discovered in Biden’s hands.
On Thursday, the president’s special counsel said that President Joe Biden’s lawyers had found new classified documents in a storage area of his garage in Wilmington, Delaware.
During a search of Biden’s homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, which was finished Wednesday night, the attorneys discovered the Obama-Biden government documents. Special Counsel to President Richard Sauber said in a statement that all but one of the documents were found in a storage area in Vice President Biden’s garage in Wilmington, Delaware. The other document was found in a room nearby.
Since the end of the Obama administration, a second group of secret documents has been found in a location used by Biden. The previous set was discovered on November 2 at a think tank connected to Biden. It was made public this week, which led to a bigger investigation and a move by the Justice Department to look carefully at the findings.
As was already said, Sauber said in the statement, “We are fully working with the National Archives and the Department of Justice on a process to make sure that any data from the Obama-Biden Administration belongs to the Archives.”
On Thursday afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement that he had appointed a special counsel to look into how the documents were stored. Robert Hur, a former US attorney, will be in charge of the investigation, Garland said.
Garland said at a press conference that “the unusual circumstances here require that a special counsel be appointed for this case.” This appointment shows that the department is committed to public safety, independence, and accountability, and that all decisions will be based on the law and the facts.
After the documents were found at the Penn Biden Center in November, Biden’s special counsel said that the attorneys closely worked with the Justice Department to look through the president’s Delaware homes, where more papers may have been sent during the 2017 presidential transition. After the papers were found in Wilmington, the DOJ was informed right away, according to Sauber, and Biden’s attorneys made arrangements for the government to seize the records. He emphasized that the White House will continue cooperating with the DOJ investigation.
In response to queries from reporters after his address on Thursday, Biden said that the fact that the documents were in a closed area made them at least somewhat secure.
Also, my Corvette is in a locked garage; is that alright? In response to a reporter’s inquiry about why he would keep paperwork close to his Corvette, he stated: “So they aren’t exactly sitting on the sidewalk, I suppose.”
Following the discovery of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump made similar claims, emphasizing that his resort was under Secret Service protection and that the door through which the data were stored had been secured. However, neither approach was sufficient to protect the secrets of national security.
After records were found at the Penn Biden Center, the president was already under a lot of scrutiny. When documents were found at Biden’s home, the scrutiny got even worse. The Republicans have been especially ready to attack the president lately. They have been drawing parallels between the sensitive information issue and how they think Trump was treated unfairly.
James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and a Republican from Kentucky, described the Wilmington finding of records as “extremely troubling” and questioned what the vice president was doing with them. When Trump invoked the justification that only the president can declassify information, he continued, “We saw the anger from Democrats.”
“We observed the FBI entering Mar-a-Lago and searching every room for surveillance cameras.” Now that we know, it seems that Joe Biden’s lawyers—whom we don’t even know, much less whose clients they represent—found some documents and gave them in, and everything is fine, according to Comer on Fox.
In a press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) referred to the newly discovered records as “another faux pas by the Biden administration,” drawing a comparison to how Trump was treated during the Mar-a-Lago search. “Congress should look into how the records were found,” he continued.
It was McCarthy who stated, “Here is a person who has been in office for more than 40 years, a person who declared on “60 Minutes” that [he] is so concerned about President Trump’s records.” “And now we discover it, exactly as the vice president kept it exposed for years in various places,”
The Presidential Records Act said that all of Biden’s and Trump’s records had to be given to the National Archives and Records Administration when they left office. However, Trump’s situation differed greatly from Biden’s in several important ways. Biden’s lawyers told the DOJ about the new documents, and the Biden administration seems to have worked with the DOJ. On the other hand, Trump’s lawyers mostly fought the investigation into whether or not he owned the materials. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump had several hundred files with classified markings. In contrast, the White House claims that just a “limited number” of classified materials have been discovered in Biden’s hands.
