President Biden traveled to Aptos, Calif., on Thursday to inspect the damage caused by the recent series of storms. He told reporters he has no regrets about how he and his attorney handled the discovery and disclosure of classified documents found in his former office and his private residence.
Susan Walsh/AP
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Susan Walsh/AP
President Biden traveled to Aptos, Calif., on Thursday to inspect the damage caused by the recent series of storms. He told reporters he has no regrets about how he and his attorney handled the discovery and disclosure of classified documents found in his former office and his private residence.
Susan Walsh/AP
President Biden told reporters Thursday that he has been cooperating with investigators and has “regrets” how he and his team have handled the discovery and disclosure of classified documents since his time as vice president during the Obama administration. I haven’t,’ he said.
“You’ll find nothing there. No regrets,” Mr. Biden told reporters after visiting storm-hit California.
This was his first public comment since the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to investigate how the documents were stored in Biden’s private residence and former office.
The president said he was following his lawyer’s advice and that “there is no ‘there’ there.”
“We found a handful of documents that had been filed in the wrong place. [National] The National Archives and the Department of Justice,” Biden said.
Biden’s attorneys uncovered a series of classified documents four times between November 2022 and last weekend, just before the midterm elections.
The first set of documents was found in early November in Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., and the second set was found in Biden’s home in Wilmington about a month and a half later. was found in the garage of , Dell.
After news of the documents broke on Jan. 9, Biden’s attorneys again searched the Wilmington home and Rehoboth Beach residence, finding more documents, twice in Wilmington.
Biden has repeatedly told reporters that he takes classified material seriously and that he and his team have been working with the Justice Department and the National Archives since it was first discovered before the 2022 midterm elections. .
White House Attorney Richard Sauber previously said in a statement, “We are confident that a thorough investigation will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his attorneys have made this mistake. As soon as he discovered it, he acted.
The timing of discovery and delay in disclosure of the documents by the Biden administration has left Republicans in an uproar, with many calling former President Donald Trump a hypocrite for accusing him. It was discovered during an FBI raid at the state’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
