“A small number” of confidential documents dating from the time of the vice-presidency of Joe Biden were found in his private residence, in Wilmington, the White House said Thursday.
The President of the United States assured “fully cooperate” with American justice during a brief exchange with the press.
Following the discovery of a dozen such documents in a former office of Joe Biden in Washington, his lawyers inspected his two private residences, where archives “could have been transferred during the transition of 2017”, has explained in a press release the lawyer of the presidency, Richard Sauber.
They found “a small number of additional documents dating from the Obama-Biden administration and classified as confidential,” which were in the garage of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and in an adjoining room, he said. .
No documents were found at his residence in the seaside town of Rehoboth in the east coast state, Sauber added, noting that the Justice Department was immediately notified to take possession of the documents. folders.
The revelations are embarrassing for the Democratic president, with authorities investigating his Republican predecessor Donald Trump’s handling of his own presidential archives for months.
The federal police had carried out a spectacular search in August of the private club in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, where the billionaire has lived since his departure from the White House. The FBI had seized thousands of documents, including a hundred classified defense secrets.
A 1978 law obliges American presidents and vice-presidents to transmit all their emails, letters and other working documents to the National Archives.