WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Wednesday played down the controversy over classified documents found at his Wilmington, Delaware home and a private office, saying the papers are “to the best of my knowledge…from 1974, stray papers.”
‘There may be something else. I don’t know,” Biden told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff.
After the president’s lawyers found a small number of classified documents in his former office in November, the FBI retrieved other documents from his Wilmington home. The FBI has also searched Biden’s Rehoboth Delaware beach home but no additional records bearing government classification were recovered there.
Biden has previously said he was surprised to learn the files from his past service in the White House and Congress contained classified material.
“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 there,” Biden told Woodruff.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to examine Biden’s handling of classified documents. In addition, the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability launched its own investigation.
Garland appointed a separate special counsel in November to investigate former President Donald Trump’s retention of documents after leaving the White House.
While both cases involve the handling of sensitive government documents, the Trump inquiry also is examining Trump’s alleged attempts to obstruct the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve the records from his Florida estate.
Contributing: Kevin Johnson
Story Credit: usatoday.com