San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
White House: More secret papers found at Biden’s home
“These considerations require avoiding the
public release of detail relevant to the investigation while it
is ongoing.”
Bob Bauer, President Joe Biden’s
lead personal lawyer
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s aides found five more pages of classified information at his Delaware home Thursday, the White House said Saturday, bringing the tally to six pages uncovered last week.
The additional pages, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said, were discovered hours after a White House statement Thursday that cited only one that had turned up in a storage area adjacent to the garage of the president’s home in Wilmington. Justice Department personnel had gone to retrieve that page, which Biden’s aides had discovered the night before, when they found the five additional pages.
The revelation came as Biden’s lawyers provided new details about their unfolding discovery over the past two months of classified materials from his time as vice president at his house and an office he used before beginning his 2020 campaign for the White House. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel Thursday to investigate Biden’s handling of sensitive records.
They also defended their decision not to be fully forthcoming about the matter. The White
House has been criticized over its public disclosures, including why it did not reveal the discoveries much earlier, and why, when it acknowledged Monday that some classified files had been found at Biden’s office Nov. 2, it did not indicate that more had been found at his house the next month.
Biden’s lead personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, said in a statement Saturday that the president’s legal team had tried to balance being transparent with “the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”
“These considerations require avoiding the public release of detail relevant to the investigation while it is ongoing,” he added.
He cited multiple rationales: Investigators at the Justice Department could object that identifying witnesses, documents or events as the investigation was underway could compromise their work. And revealing certain details in public also posed the risk that as more information emerged, earlier statements could prove to be “incomplete.”
It was a White House lawyer, Richard Sauber, who said in a statement early Thursday that a single-page classified document had been discovered a day earlier among stored materials in a room adjacent to the garage of
Biden’s home in Wilmington.
Once Biden’s aides uncovered the document, Bauer said in his statement, they “left the document where it was found and suspended their search of the specific space where it was located.” They notified the Justice Department the next morning and began “arranging for the delivery of that material.”
Sauber said in a statement Saturday that because he has security clearance, he had gone to Wilmington on Thursday evening to oversee the transfer of the document. When Justice Department personnel arrived, he continued, “five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,” which officials “immediately took possession of.”
Bauer also issued a timeline that filled in certain details.
After Biden’s personal lawyers discovered Obama-era documents Nov. 2 in a closet of an office Biden had used at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington, the White House notified the National Archives and Records Administration of their discovery.
For the next eight days, Biden’s personal lawyers worked with the archives until Nov. 10, when the Justice Department informed them that it had begun a preliminary inquiry into what happened.
“Once the president’s personal attorneys heard from DOJ, the president’s personal attorneys were in regular contact with DOJ,” Bauer said.
The National Archives’ inspector general told the Justice Department about the matter Nov. 4, and the department opened an inquiry Nov. 9.
Some critics have said the Biden team should have notified the Justice Department even earlier.
On Dec. 20, as has been known, Biden’s personal lawyers inspected the garage of the president’s Wilmington house and found what Bauer called “a small number of potential records bearing classified markings.”
According to Bauer, they stopped their search and alerted the Justice Department, which took the records from the garage the next day.
Biden’s personal lawyers were searching his houses in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Del., on Wednesday for any additional records when they found the one-page file in the storage space in Wilmington.
“Following the search at the Wilmington residence, the attorneys proceeded to the Rehoboth residence and conducted a search there,” Bauer’s timeline said. “No potential records were identified at the Rehoboth Beach residence, and the attorneys returned to Washington, D.C., late in the evening.”
Sauber said Saturday that Biden’s personal and White House legal teams did not anticipate releasing additional details.
“We have now publicly released specific details about the documents identified, how they were identified and where they were found,” he said. “The appointment of the special counsel in this matter this week means we will now refer specific questions to the special counsel’s office moving forward.”