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CBS News (“U.S. attorney reviewing documents marked classified from Joe Biden’s vice presidency found at Biden think tank“):
Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden’s vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney’s inquiry.
The material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys “were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,” Sauber said in a statement to CBS News. The documents were contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers, the sources said. The sources revealed neither what the documents contain nor their level of classification. A source familiar told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear secrets.
Sauber also said that on the same day the material was discovered, Nov. 2, the White House counsel’s office notified the National Archives, which took possession of the materials the following morning.
“The discovery of these documents was made by the President’s attorneys,” Sauber said. “The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives. Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”
A source familiar with the matter said representatives from the National Archives then notified the Justice Department.
Garland assigned U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to find out how the material marked classified ended up at the Penn Biden Center. The review is considered a preliminary step, and the attorney general will determine whether further investigation is necessary, including potentially appointing a special counsel.
Lausch was nominated to be U.S. attorney by former President Donald Trump, and he is one of only two current Trump-era U.S. attorneys still serving. The other is Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who is leading an investigation into the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
Lausch recently briefed the attorney general and will eventually submit a final report to Garland. The review is expected to conclude soon.
WaPo (“Justice Dept. reviewing classified documents found in Biden’s post-VP office“) presents essentially the same facts but adds this:
While the Biden case has obvious echoes of the Mar-a-Lago investigation, the details provided by Biden’s lawyer on Monday suggest key differences that could factor heavily in whether the Biden documents become a criminal matter.
Sauber said the Biden documents were discovered by the president’s lawyers and voluntarily turned over to authorities. By comparison, in Trump’s case, NARA officials pressed for material to be returned, and then Trump’s office was served with a grand jury subpoena demanding their return. After Trump’s lawyers handed over 38 classified documents in response to the subpoena, an FBI search recovered more than 100 additional classified documents that were not turned over to authorities.
The Biden documents “were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives,” Sauber said in the statement. “Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”
Much of the criminal investigation into the keeping of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence, has centered on what officials have described in court papers as possible obstruction of the efforts to recover all of the documents. So far, no such allegation has been leveled in the Biden matter, though it is at an earlier stage.
One person familiar with the Biden inquiry, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing review, argued that while there are obvious similarities with the Trump case, so far the circumstances appear to be quite different. That person said the voluntary notification, and the sheer difference in the number of documents stand out as key differences.
“But at the heart of it is, in both situations classified national security information went somewhere it shouldn’t have, so that raises a bigger question about the handling of classified [material], both in the White House and then during the period of transition,” the person added.
Legal experts say that it is not uncommon for some people who have security clearances to mishandle classified documents. But these situations are typically handled administratively, not criminally, because the criteria for prosecuting people who mishandle classified documents include proving that the person deliberately flouted rules for how to secure the materials.
Which is pretty much my reaction when reading the CBS report. Both Biden and Trump wound up taking classified documents into private spaces in violation of the law. It’s almost certain that Biden did so inadvertently, whereas Trump certainly knew he had them. Moreover, he could presumably have gotten away with keeping them—or simply destroying them—rather than turning them over to the proper authorities which he says he did—and I have no reason to doubt him—the same day they were discovered. Conversely, Trump refused for an extended period to turn them over even after repeated requests, only doing so when his compound was raided by the DOJ.
