WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe Biden’s former institute, the White House said Monday.
Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said “documents with classified markings” were discovered as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022.
A person who is familiar with the matter said Attorney General Merrick Garland asked U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the matter after the Archives referred the issue to the department.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, said the American public deserved to know earlier about the revelation of classified documents.
“They knew about this a week before the election, maybe the American people should have known that,” Jordan told reporters. “They certainly knew about the raid on Mar-a-Lago 91 days before this election, but nice if on Nov. 2, the country would have known that there were classified documents at the Biden Center.”
The revelation comes as Republicans are promising to launch investigations of Biden’s administration.
