President Biden visited Aptos, California, Thursday, to tour the damage caused by the recent series of storms. He told reporters that he has no regrets about how he and his lawyers handled the discovery and disclosure of classified documents found in his former office and personal residence.
Susan Walsh/AP
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Susan Walsh/AP
President Biden visited Aptos, California, Thursday, to tour the damage caused by the recent series of storms. He told reporters that he has no regrets about how he and his lawyers handled the discovery and disclosure of classified documents found in his former office and personal residence.
Susan Walsh/AP
President Biden told reporters Thursday that he is cooperating with investigators and has “no regrets” about how he and his team handled the discovery and disclosure of classified documents from his time as vice president during the Obama administration.
“I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets,” Biden told reporters while visiting parts of California devastated by the storms.
It was his first public comment since the Justice Department assigned a special counsel to investigate how the documents ended up in Biden’s private residence and former office.
The president said that he is following the advice of his lawyers and that, “There is no ‘there’ there.”
“We found a small number of documents that were presented in the wrong place. We immediately gave them to the [National] Archives and the Department of Justice,” Biden said. “We are fully cooperating and look forward to this being resolved quickly.”
A series of classified documents were discovered by Biden’s lawyers on four separate occasions between November 2022, just before the midterms, and this past weekend.
The first set of documents were found in early November in Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, DC, and the second set was found about a month later and a half later in Biden’s garage at his home in Wilmington. , Del.
After news of the documents broke on January 9, Biden’s lawyers again searched his home in Wilmington as well as his residence in Rehoboth Beach, finding more documents on two occasions in ‘Wilmington.
Biden has repeatedly told reporters that he takes classified materials seriously and that he and his team have been cooperating with the DOJ and the National Archives since they were first discovered before the 2022 midterms.
White House counsel Richard Sauber previously said in a statement that, “We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovered this error.”
The timing of the discovery and delayed disclosure of the documents by the Biden administration has raised eyebrows among Republicans, many calling the president a hypocrite for punishing former President Donald Trump — who is currently under investigation for mishandling documents and other charges — after hundreds of pages. of classified documents were found in an FBI raid on his[uMar-a-LagofiFloridaresort[uMar-a-LagofiFlorida
