Former and current Biden administration officials have reportedly blamed the National Archives for mishandling President Joe Biden’s classified documents stashed in three separate locations.
According to a Friday CNN report that cited “former and current administration officials and others familiar with the process,” the National Archives refused to treat then-Vice President Biden’s records with the “same high regard” as it did former President Obama’s records.
“While the National Archives sends staff members to the White House to gather files and papers of the President, they do not treat all vice presidential papers with the same high regard, officials said,” CNN reported.
“Staff members from the vice president’s office are often left to sort through papers themselves, officials say, rather than specialists from the Archives,” the report continued. “While classified documents hold the same level of secrecy for presidents, vice presidents and anyone with proper security clearance to handle them, officials say, it would be easier for papers outside the Oval Office to be mixed up or left behind.”
The report also stated the documents that were left behind by the National Archives were ultimately dumped at the Penn Biden Center, where a trove of classified documents was unearthed by Biden’s attorneys in early November 2022:
Many of the boxes of personal items – not deemed covered by the records requirements to submit to the National Archives – were transported from the vice president’s office to a temporary facility about one block away from the White House, run by the General Services Administration. From there, they went to another temporary office before eventually being moved to the offices of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank Biden opened in early 2018.
The report did not state how classified documents reached two other nonsecure locations, such as the Biden family garage.
NBC News reported Thursday that Biden’s former executive assistant Kathy Chung, hired to the post after Hunter’s recommendation, was questioned by law enforcement over the classified documents stashed in three separate locations. Chung’s employment as Joe Biden’s assistant was in part due to Hunter, who recommended his father hire her, according to Hunter’s laptop emails.
Hunter and Chung remained in close contact over the course of Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president. Their correspondence included arranging Biden family business meetings with former University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, who Joe Biden later picked as U.S. ambassador to Germany.
Joe Biden admitted in 2016 that Hunter had access to his father’s garage. Moreover, Hunter owned Joe Biden’s residence in 2018, according to a document unearthed by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine on Thursday.
On Friday, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the chair of the House Oversight Committee, confirmed the address on Hunter’s driver’s license in 2018 was the same as Joe Biden’s Delaware residence.
Rep. Mark Green, chair of Homeland Security, has demanded “a forensic analysis on everybody” who had access to the Penn Biden Center and Joe Biden’s residence, where classified documents were found in Biden’s garage.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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