Biden draws distinction between his and Trump’s secret papers

President says there are ‘degrees of irresponsibility’ regarding classified documents.

President Joe Biden noted Friday that he has co-operated with law enforcement in their search for classified documents. Picture: AFP

US President Joe Biden said that there are “degrees of irresponsibility” regarding handling of classified materials, drawing a distinction between the material found at locations he used and documents taken from former president Donald Trump’s Florida home.

Asked by ABC News if there was anything “irresponsible” in how he handled classified documents, the president downplayed his situation.

“There’s degrees of irresponsibility,” Mr Biden said in an interview that aired Friday night. “There can be significant degrees of irresponsibility.”

He added, “The way in which the boxes were packed up from my office — apparently not everything was gone through as meticulously as it should have. But there was no intention.” Attorney-General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to look into whether classified material was mishandled after Mr Biden left his post as vice president. In November, one of Mr Biden’s lawyers’s discovered material marked classified at an office he used at the Penn Biden Centre, a Washington think tank he launched with the University of Pennsylvania.

The Justice Department separately is probing the handling of classified material at Mr Trump’s residence and private club, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida. That investigation has escalated over more than a year; a court-authorised FBI search in August uncovered a trove of material with classified markings.

Mr Biden commented on it briefly during a September interview with CBS News. “How that could possibly happen, how one anyone could be that irresponsible,” the President said of Mr Trump.

Mr Biden said in the ABC News interview that he commented on Mr Trump’s case because of the media coverage of it that showed documents that federal agents found at Mar-a-Lago. “You guys were showing on television things lying on the ground that said ‘top secret’.”

He was apparently referring to a widely circulated photo showing documents that federal agents had laid out; the image did not represent how Mr Trump kept the papers.

Mr Biden also noted on Friday that he has dealt with inquires from law enforcement differently than Mr Trump has. “The difference is, every single, solitary thing I’ve done, I’ve done voluntarily,”

Mr Biden said. He added that he’s invited the Department of Justice to search his homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach.

There was a protracted legal exchange before federal agents searched Mr Trump’s residence.

The Wall Street Journal