President Joe Biden defended his handling of a second batch of classified documents found at his Wilmington, Delaware, home as the attorney general considers appointing a special counsel to investigate the matter.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden defended his handling of a second batch of classified documents found at his Wilmington, Delaware, home as the attorney general considers appointing a special counsel to investigate the matter.
“By the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage, so it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street,” Biden told reporters Thursday, minutes after the White House confirmed that more classified documents were discovered in his garage following a search by the president’s aides.
He said he and his team are “cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department’s review” of the matter. “As I said earlier this week, people know I take classified documents and classified material seriously,” he added.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is weighing whether to appoint a special counsel to investigate how classified documents came to be discovered at Biden’s former office and his home, according to people familiar with the matter. That would be a blow for the White House, which has sought to quickly move past the episode.
Read more: Garland Considering Special Counsel in Biden Documents Probe
A special counsel is already investigating former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents following an FBI search of his Palm Beach, Florida, home in August.
The revelations about classified documents in Biden’s possession have deepened political and legal peril for the president, who has called Trump “totally irresponsible” for the hundreds of pages of classified materials he and his aides took from the White House after his presidency ended in 2021.
House Republicans, who have largely defended Trump, have said they will investigate whether Biden improperly kept the documents found at his office and home and whether intelligence sources and methods were compromised as a result.
The different approaches taken by Biden and Trump, who fought efforts to return classified materials to the government, have made it hard for Republicans to draw an equivalence. But the revelations have nonetheless opened Biden to accusations of hypocrisy.
Read More: Biden’s Classified-Document Headache Worsens With Second Batch
In his comments Thursday, Biden said he was limited in what he could say about the matter. “I’m going to get a chance to speak on all of this, God willing, soon,” he said.
In a statement earlier Thursday, White House special counsel Richard Sauber confirmed that an additional batch of documents were discovered in a garage storage space at Biden’s home after classified materials were originally found in an office Biden used after his vice presidency ended.
Lawyers for Biden conducted a search for classified materials after documents were discovered six days before the November midterms in a closet inside Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington. The review, which also covered Biden’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, was completed last night, according to Sauber.
“During the review, the lawyers discovered among personal and political papers a small number of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings,” Sauber said. “All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the President’s Wilmington residence garage. One document consisting of one page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room.”
Biden’s team “immediately notified” the Department of Justice and arranged for it to take possession of the materials, according to the statement. Sauber said the search uncovered no classified documents at Biden’s beach home.
–With assistance from Josh Wingrove and Jennifer Jacobs.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.