CBS News Reporter Spars With Karine Jean-Pierre Over Classified Biden Docs

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre sparred with CBS News correspondent Ed O’Keefe on Thursday, with the White House reporter pressing the top aide on why she won’t say more about the discovery of classified documents at multiple locations associated with President Joe Biden.

“What is the definition of transparent in this case?” O’Keefe asked. He and other reporters had grilled Jean-Pierre on when the White House found out about the documents and when it decided to inform the public. “Is it the lawyers being transparent legally with the [National] Archives and the Justice Department or is it the White House at large being transparent with the general public?”

Jean-Pierre stressed that the matter was being taken seriously, though she stuck with the timeline of Biden lawyers having alerted the Archives and the Justice Department. “This is the right thing to do in this case,” she said, before later adding: “I can’t talk about this, because the Department of Justice is reviewing it... I am limited in what I can say. I think you should reach out to the White House Counsel.”

In response, O’Keefe proposed a simple solution: Why not have the lawyers come to the briefing room and answer questions themselves?

Jean-Pierre countered with the lawyers’ previous written statements, though O’Keefe fired back by suggesting that demonstrates a lack of public transparency from the White House.

“There has not been a limit of transparency—I will disagree with you on that,” Jean-Pierre replied, offering multiple times to reporters that “there is a process” on how these investigations take place. What that process did not include—at least on Thursday’s briefing—was giving a reason why the document discovery was not disclosed sooner.

The encounter between O’Keefe and Jean-Pierre was the second tense back-and-forth between reporters and Biden officials on Thursday regarding the classified documents. Hours earlier, President Biden told Fox News reporter Peter Doocy that files found at his Wilmington, Delaware garage were safe because they were locked in the same unit as his Corvette.