The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe Biden’s former institute, the White House said Monday.
Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on November 2, 2022, in a “locked closet” in the office, Sauber said.
Sauber said the attorneys immediately alerted the White House Counsel’s office, who notified the National Archives and Records Administration — which took custody of the documents the next day.
“Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” Sauber said.
A person who is familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly said Attorney General Merrick Garland asked U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the matter after the Archives referred the issue to the department. John Lausch was appointed to his post by former President Donald Trump.
Trump’s storage of classified documents and presidential records at his private club in Florida is part of a separate Justice Department probe that Garland has tapped special counsel Jack Smith to investigate. The FBI served a search warrant on the Mar-a-Lago compound last year to seize classified and presidential records after spelling out probable cause that the former president and his attorneys had not properly turned them over to the federal authorities despite repeated requests.
The National Archives did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
CBS was first to report on the discovery of the potentially classified documents.
Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
