Gozde Bayar
14 January 2023•Update: 16 January 2023
ANKARA
The White House announced Saturday that aides had found five more classified documents at US President Joe Biden's home in the Northeastern state of Delaware than previously disclosed.
Richard Sauber, one of Biden's advisers, released a statement outlining the process regarding documents that have emerged since Wednesday at the President's Biden Diplomatic Center and his residence in Delaware.
The third batch of documents was found at Biden's residence in the city of Wilmington, said Sauber.
Stressing that he followed a coordinated process with the National Archives and the Justice Department, Sauber said that five additional pages of documents with classified markings were found at Biden's home Thursday evening, making a total of six classified documents retrieved from there.
Sauber explained that when Biden's personal attorneys identified one classified document at Biden's home on Wednesday, they stopped searching for additional documents because they lacked the security clearances necessary to view those materials.
Sauber said the documents were handed over to Justice Department officials.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the issue of the classified documents found at addresses linked to Biden.
The White House said earlier that more classified documents were found at Biden’s home in Wilmington – most in a storage space in the garage.
Biden's attorneys found the first batch of about 10 documents at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, DC in a locked closet as they were preparing to vacate the office space, and handed them to the National Archives and Records Administration.
They included documents containing US intelligence memos and briefing materials dated between 2013 and 2016 related to Ukraine, Iran, and the UK, a source told CNN.
Biden said he was surprised to learn the classified documents from his time as vice president were found at the office of his think tank, adding that his team “immediately” handed them to the National Archives.
Republicans have tried to capitalize on the news, drawing parallels between Biden and the controversy over former President Donald Trump holding onto classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort residence.
Democrats have countered that Trump held onto hundreds of documents, not the handful found so far found at Biden’s addresses, and Biden immediately turned over the documents to the government, while Trump held onto them for years, lied about them, and refused to hand them over.
