President Biden's Legal Team Finds Collections of Secret Documents in Different Locations
JAKARTA - President Joe Biden's legal team uncovered another batch of classified government documents, following the initial discovery of classified documents in his former Washington office last fall, sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
A follow-up document search was launched after President Biden's lawyers found the initial classified documents in early November, the sources said.
One of the sources told CNN as quoted January 11, the effort led to the discovery of additional documents of interest to federal officials who reviewed the matter.
The NBC News report, which first reported on the new batch of classified documents, said the level of classification, number and exact location of the additional documents were not immediately clear.
It also said it was not clear when the additional documents were found and whether the search for other classified materials that Biden may have had since his time as vice president had been completed.
Meanwhile, Senator Mark Warner, chair of the Democratic Party's Intelligence Committee, has sought a briefing on the first Biden doc discovery, he said Tuesday.
A spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio, the committee's deputy chairman from the Republican Party, said Rubio and Warner had written to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, requesting access to the classified documents.
The two senators also requested a damage assessment by the intelligence community and briefings on the safekeeping of classified documents by President Biden, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, a Republican.
The report comes two days after a White House attorney said classified documents while Biden was vice president were discovered in November by the president's personal attorney at the office of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
Lawyers for Biden found less than a dozen classified notes inside the headquarters, notified the US National Archives of the find, turned over the materials, said they were working closely with the Archives and the Department of Justice.
President Biden said Tuesday he and his team are fully cooperative with the review of what happened.
It said earlier that the initial batch found contained 10 classified documents, including US intelligence material and briefing memos on Ukraine, Iran, and the UK.
Some classified documents are "top secret," the highest level. They were found in three or four boxes which also contained declassified papers that fall under the Presidential Records Act.
It said classified documents should be kept in a secure location. And under the Presidential Records Act, White House documents are supposed to go to the National Archives when a government ends.
Prior to a new report on a second wave of government materials on Wednesday, the White House declined to answer critical questions about classified documents from Biden's time as vice president being found.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer questions about the document, citing the Justice Department's ongoing review of the matter. She could not say who brought the documents into the office or whether other documents were found.
She also could not say whether an audit was under way to find other possible documents, or when the president had been briefed on the document's discovery.