Second Classified Biden Documents Discovered

An aide to US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden uncov­ered a new batch of clas­si­fied gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments in a sec­ond loca­tion, fur­ther deep­en­ing polit­i­cal embar­rass­ment for the White House.

The first cache was found in the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., pri­vate office that Biden used after tak­ing office as vice president.

The mat­ter is being inves­ti­gat­ed by the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice.

For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion for alleged­ly mis­han­dling clas­si­fied files.

As of Wednes­day, it was still unclear when and where Biden aides dis­cov­ered the addi­tion­al files.

The orig­i­nals of the dozen or so doc­u­ments were dis­cov­ered in Novem­ber at the Penn-Biden Cen­ter, a think tank near the White House, but did not come to light until this week.

The doc­u­ments include notes and explana­to­ry mate­r­i­al from US intel­li­gence agen­cies regard­ing Ukraine, Iran, and the Unit­ed Kingdom.

It is relat­ed to the vice pres­i­dent dur­ing the Barack Oba­ma pres­i­den­cy, but it is unclear why it appeared in his per­son­al office, which he began using after that.

Access to clas­si­fied doc­u­ments is restrict­ed to per­sons with spe­cial author­i­ty by law, and meth­ods of stor­age and preser­va­tion are also stipulated.

White House files, includ­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, must be turned over to the Nation­al Archives after the end of the admin­is­tra­tion’s term.

The White House has yet to com­ment on the new­ly dis­cov­ered batch. How­ev­er, the dis­cov­ery has also been con­firmed by the US media, includ­ing the BBC’s part­ner US broad­cast­er CBS.

Biden’s press sec­re­tary, Karine Jean-Pierre, declined to answer a ques­tion about caching the ini­tial files at a reg­u­lar press brief­ing on Wednesday.

“The Depart­ment of Jus­tice is inves­ti­gat­ing,” he said. “I won’t do more than what the pres­i­dent said yesterday.”

Asked why it took him two months to release the news, he declined to say when Biden was briefed. The dis­cov­ery comes just days before midterm par­lia­men­tary elections.

Biden said on Tues­day he was “sur­prised” to learn about it and said he was “coop­er­at­ing” with the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s review.

The con­tro­ver­sy comes as the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent faces scruti­ny from the new Repub­li­can major­i­ty in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Now that Democ­rats are no longer one-par­ty ruler of Wash­ing­ton, there is a call for over­sight and account­abil­i­ty,” James Com­er, the new chair­man of the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee, said Wednesday.