(Mexico City) United States President Joe Biden said he was unaware of the contents of confidential documents dating to his vice presidency under Barack Obama (2009-2017) found in one of the offices he sometimes used as work places.
“I was notified of this discovery and was surprised to learn that government-related documents had been taken to this office. But I don’t know what’s in the documents,” the US president told reporters on the sidelines of a summit with the Mexican president and Canadian prime minister in Mexico City.
His lawyers “will cooperate fully” in the examination of these documents, he assured, hoping that this examination will end “soon”.
The documents were found “when my lawyers cleaned out my office at the University of Pennsylvania”, detailed Joe Biden.
As soon as the lawyers found that some were confidential, “they did what they had to do, they called the archives” to hand them over, according to the president.
This “small number of documents classified as confidential” were found in a “locked cupboard” at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank linked to the University of Pennsylvania, the president’s legal adviser, Richard Sauber, said on Monday.
“The documents had not been the subject of any prior request or request” and, since their delivery to the Archives, Joe Biden’s lawyers have continued to cooperate in order “to ensure that the Archives are in their possession from any Obama-Biden administration archive,” he added.
The FBI had carried out a spectacular search of Donald Trump’s residence in Florida in August in order to recover thousands of documents, including a hundred classified defense secrets, taken by the ex-president after his departure from the White House and that he had until then refused to return to the Archives.
According to press reports, these confidential documents seized at his Mar-a-Lago club contained in particular sensitive information on China and Iran, as well as nuclear secrets.
“When will the FBI search Joe Biden’s many residences, or even the White House? “Reacted Donald Trump in a press release.