Biden directs blame for classified documents to staff who packed
President says in PBS interview that some material dates to 1974 and includes ‘stray papers’.
President Joe Biden focused attention on the role his staff played while packing up his papers after he left government, suggesting documents marked classified were found in various locations he used after leaving the vice-presidency because workers didn’t do a thorough job sifting through his papers.
“As they packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should have been done to go thoroughly through every single piece of literature that’s there,” Mr Biden said to PBS’s Judy Woodruff in an interview broadcast on Wednesday night.
The interview marked the most detail Mr Biden has given to date about how classified papers from his time in the Senate and vice-presidency ended up in his home and an office, a revelation that has led Attorney-General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate the mishandling of classified materials.
Mr Biden’s executive assistant, Kathy Chung, was involved in the packing up of his vice-presidential office, according to former aides, but she was also helped by other lower-level staff members. Ms Chung was interviewed by federal investigators late last year about the discovered documents, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A lawyer for Mr Biden first found classified documents in November at an office that Mr Biden used at the Penn Biden Centre, a Washington think tank he launched with the University of Pennsylvania. The FBI subsequently searched the President’s Delaware homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach and his Penn Biden Centre office near the US Capitol looking for materials marked classified.
Mr Biden has said that he was surprised by the discovery of classified material in places he used. He has said that he doesn’t know – and hasn’t asked – exactly what material was found. But on Wednesday he provided some sense of the documents, saying some dated back to 1974 and included “stray papers”.
Mr Biden added: “There may be something else, I don’t know.”
The President said that he voluntarily opened his home to federal agents to search. “No one’s had to threaten to do anything,” Mr Biden said, adding that he “opened every single aperture I have in the house, offices, everything”.
The Wall Street Journal
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