President Joe Biden failed to explain Thursday why documents with classified markings were stored next to his vintage Corvette in a garage at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
White House lawyers said in a statement Thursday that a “small number of Obama-Biden administration records with classified markings” were found “among personal and political papers” in storage spaces at the Wilmington home. It’s the second set of classified documents found in Biden’s possession after lawyers revealed earlier this week that staff clearing out office space at his former D.C. think tank found about 10 classified documents in November.
Asked “what were you thinking?” by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy on Thursday, Biden responded, “By the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage, so it’s not like it’s sitting out on the street. But as I said earlier this week, people know I take classified documents and classified material seriously. I also said we’re cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department’s review.”
ADVERTISEMENT
He then regurgitated parts of the statement released earlier Thursday by White House lawyers, who said Biden’s Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach homes were searched after the think-tank discovery, as well as other sites where materials may have been shipped after Biden left the VP’s office in 2017.
Those searches were completed on Wednesday night, White House special counsel Richard Sauber’s statement said, and no documents were found at any other sites. All but one of the documents found in the Wilmington home were in the garage storage space; one document consisting of one page was found in storage in an adjacent room.
“We’re going to see all of this unfold,” Biden added Thursday at a White House event on the economy, before leaving the podium as reporters tried to shout follow-up questions.
The discovery comes on the heels of a federal investigation into about 100 classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Florida golf resort and nearby storage unit.
Unlike Trump, however, Biden’s lawyers said they “immediately” notified the Department of Justice after the two discoveries and arranged for the documents to be returned to the National Archives.
Sauber previously noted that, also unlike Trump’s case, the records weren’t the subject of any previous inquiry by the National Archives.
The exact classification levels of the documents is unclear, but CNN reported that some of the files found in D.C. were designated “sensitive compartmented information,” a label typically used for highly sensitive information obtained from intelligence sources. The documents reportedly included “intelligence memos and briefing topics” on global topics including Ukraine and Iran.
