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  • Classified Documents Found At Multiple Biden and Pence Locations

    Well what perfect timing and it's just what America needed right at this junction, after all there's no chance it's going to muddy the waters;

    From ABC News; DoJ reviewing potentially classified documents found at Joe Biden's former office buildings.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-...nter/101840444


    If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

  • #2
    Originally posted by Monash View Post
    Well what perfect timing and it's just what America needed right at this junction, after all there's no chance it's going to muddy the waters;

    From ABC News; DoJ reviewing potentially classified documents found at Joe Biden's former office buildings.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-...nter/101840444

    I think all presidential libraries will go through an Archives scrub...as they should. And if items were taken intentionally or unintentionally appropriate sanctions should be taken.

    A mitigation point, though, there does not appear to be the stonewalling and outright lying which came from a certain Florida piece of real estate.
    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
    Mark Twain

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Monash View Post
      Well what perfect timing and it's just what America needed right at this junction, after all there's no chance it's going to muddy the waters;

      From ABC News; DoJ reviewing potentially classified documents found at Joe Biden's former office buildings.

      https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-...nter/101840444

      Definitely don't need the distraction right now. Though as Buck said, there's quite a bit of difference...not that the MAGAs will care one way or another.

      They've never met a false equivalence that they didn't immediately latch on to and scream "bOtH sIdEs!!"

      There's a key difference between the classified documents found at a former Biden office and the ones Trump kept at Mar-a-Lago, national security expert says


      A US attorney is reviewing a handful of classified documents found at President Joe Biden's former office in Washington, CBS News reported Monday.

      In a statement, Richard Sauber, special counsel to President Biden, said the White House is cooperating with the National Archives and the Justice Department on the matter.

      "The documents were discovered when the president's personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC," Sauber said. Biden held a position at the center, run by the University of Pennsylvania, from 2017 to 2019.

      The documents "were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives," Sauber noted and were immediately handed over to the record-keeping agency.

      The Washington Post on Monday evening reported that roughly 10 documents were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Engagement, citing a person familiar with the probe. The White House Counsel's Office notified the archives upon the discovery and the agency quickly took control of the records, Sauber told the outlet.

      The documents were found shortly before Attorney general Merrick Garland named former federal prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee two Trump-related investigations in mid-November.

      Former President Donald Trump immediately pounced on the story. "When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?" he posted on his social media network.

      But Bradley P. Moss, a national security lawyer, told Insider that so far this looks like a routine matter with no allegation of criminal wrongdoing. He contrasted what we know about the case with that being built against Trump, who held boxes of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort even after their return had been demanded by the National Archives.

      "Biden's team did exactly what you're supposed to do," Moss said. "When you find improperly stored classified documents, you immediately notify the government — and you turn it over immediately."

      Classified documents are routinely misplaced, and so far this looks to be a routine investigation, perhaps motivated in part by a desire by the Department of Justice to show it is impartial, Moss said. The nature of the investigation would change if the US attorney in charge of reviewing the documents, Matt Lausch, a Trump appointee, were to uncover any evidence that Biden or his staff misled the National Archives.

      "The reason Donald Trump is in criminal jeopardy right now isn't just because of the documents being improperly stored. It was the obstruction," Moss said. "That is why it has gotten to the point it has, where we're looking at the real possibility of a criminal indictment."
      _________

      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

      Comment


      • #4
        I have handled classified documents since I was 23 years old. During that time I have probably come across mis-stored/labelled classified materiel a dozen times. It happens. But in each case a thorough investigation discovered they were legit accidents. Regardless, I saw 3 different people's careers come to a crashing end. In all the others, including my own, no sanctions were taken other than a counseling statement. (I incorrectly stored a Secret document in a Top Secret safe. I misunderstood how it was classified...plus I was a 2nd Lieutenant, so...)
        “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
        Mark Twain

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
          I have handled classified documents since I was 23 years old. During that time I have probably come across mis-stored/labelled classified materiel a dozen times. It happens. But in each case a thorough investigation discovered they were legit accidents. Regardless, I saw 3 different people's careers come to a crashing end. In all the others, including my own, no sanctions were taken other than a counseling statement. (I incorrectly stored a Secret document in a Top Secret safe. I misunderstood how it was classified...plus I was a 2nd Lieutenant, so...)
          Oh well, better to miss classify upwards than downwards. And if they fired 2nd Lieutenants every time they made minor mistakes the officer corps would go extinct.
          If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

          Comment


          • #6
            A side-by-side look at the Trump, Biden classified documents

            The revelation that potentially classified materials were discovered at think tank offices formerly used by President Joe Biden has prompted questions on how the circumstance compares to the seizure last year of hundreds of documents marked as classified from Mar-a-Lago, the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump.

            A side-by-side look at the similarities and differences between the two situations:

            HOW MANY CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

            BIDEN: “A small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered on Nov. 2, 2022, in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank in Washington, as Biden's personal attorneys were clearing out the offices, according to Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president.

            Biden kept an office at the Penn Center after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign. It was affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and continued to operate independently of the Biden administration.

            TRUMP: Roughly 300 documents with classification markings — including some at the top secret level — have been recovered from Trump since he left office in January 2021.

            In January 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of documents, telling Justice Department officials they contained “a lot” of classified material. In August, FBI agents took about 33 boxes and containers of 11,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office.

            HOW QUICKLY WERE THE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS TURNED OVER?

            BIDEN: His personal attorneys immediately alerted the White House counsel's office, who notified NARA, which took custody of the documents the next day, Sauber said.

            “Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” Sauber said.

            TRUMP: A Trump representative told NARA in December 2021 that presidential records had been found at Mar-a-Lago, nearly a year after Trump left office. Fifteen boxes of records containing some classified material were transferred from Mar-Lago to NARA in January.

            A few months later, investigators from the Justice Department and FBI visited Mar-a-Lago to get more information about classified materials taken to Florida. Federal officials also served a subpoena for some documents believed to be at the estate.

            In August 2022, FBI agents conducting a search retrieved 33 boxes from Mar-a-Lago. The search came after lawyers for Trump provided a sworn certification that all government records had been returned.

            COULD EITHER PRESIDENT FACE CHARGES RELATED TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE DOCUMENTS?

            BIDEN: Despite the discovery of classified materials in a Biden office, there is no indication Biden himself was aware of the existence of the records before they were turned over.

            The administration has also said that the records were turned over the same day they were discovered, without any intent to conceal. That's important because the Justice Department historically looks for willfulness, or an intent to mishandle government secrets, in deciding whether to bring criminal charges.

            But even if the Justice Department were to find the case prosecutable on the evidence, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has concluded that a president is immune from prosecution during his time in office. Former special counsel Robert Mueller cited that guidance in deciding not to reach a conclusion on whether Trump should face charges as part of his investigation into coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

            Attorney General Merrick Garland asked U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch — one of the few U.S. attorneys to be held over from Trump’s administration — to review the matter after the Archives referred the issue to the department, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly.

            TRUMP: The former president possibly faces exposure for obstruction over the protracted battle to retrieve the documents themselves. And, since he's no longer in office, he wouldn't be afforded protections from possible prosecution that would apply to a sitting president.

            In November, Garland appointed Jack Smith, a veteran war crimes prosecutor with a background in public corruption probes, to lead investigations into Trump's retention of classified documents, as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

            WHAT DID THE PRESIDENTS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE DISCOVERY OF THE DOCUMENTS?

            BIDEN: Answering questions from journalists at the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico on Tuesday, Biden said he was “surprised to learn" that the documents had been found at his think tank. He said he didn't know what was in the material but takes classified documents “very seriously.”

            He said his team acted appropriately by quickly turning the documents over.

            “They did what they should have done,” Biden said. “They immediately called the Archives.”

            In September, speaking of the situation with Trump, Biden told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that the discovery of top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago raised concerns that sensitive data was compromised and called it “irresponsible.”

            TRUMP: Trump has claimed at times that he declassified the documents that he took with him — though he has provided no evidence of that. He said in a Fox News interview in September that a president can declassify material “even by thinking about it.”

            The former president has called the Mar-a-Lago search an “unannounced raid” that was “not necessary or appropriate” and represented “dark times for our Nation.”

            Of Biden, Trump weighed in Monday on his social media site, asking, “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?”

            WHAT ARE THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE DOCUMENTS?

            BIDEN: While unlikely to affect the Justice Department’s decision-making with regard to charging Trump in his own case, Biden's document disclosure could intensify skepticism among Republicans and others who are already critical that politics is the basis for probes of the former president.

            There are also possible ramifications in a new, GOP-controlled Congress where Republicans are promising to launch widespread investigations of Biden’s administration.

            Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, said Monday that the American public deserved to know earlier about the revelation of Biden's classified documents. The Ohio Republican is among House Republicans pushing for the creation of a “select subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal government” within the Judiciary Committee.

            Rep. Mike Turner, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has requested that the U.S. intelligence community conduct a “damage assessment” of the documents found at the Penn Center.

            TRUMP: In its immediate aftermath, Trump and his supporters seized on the Mar-a-Lago search as a partisan attack from Democrats who had long been desirous of removing him from office.

            During his 2024 campaign launch in November, at the same club agents had searched months earlier, Trump referenced the probes against him, casting himself as “a victim” of wayward prosecutors and the “festering, rot and corruption of Washington.”

            ___

            Here's one of the biggest differences: "Attorney General Merrick Garland asked U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch — one of the few U.S. attorneys to be held over from Trump’s administration — to review the matter after the Archives referred the issue to the department"
            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

            Comment


            • #7
              Second batch of classified Biden documents discovered during extensive search

              After classified materials were found at an old office of President Joe Biden's, aides discovered a second batch of classified documents at a location that Biden was known to use after leaving office as vice president, ABC News has learned.

              Sources familiar with the matter said the second set of documents contained classified information. They came to light as Biden aides conducted an extensive search of locations where he worked after leaving the Obama administration.

              Biden aides were responding to the November discovery of classified documents at the Washington, D.C., office of the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Biden Center, which Biden used after his time as vice president.

              The original November discovery was immediately reported to the National Archives and Records Administration, according to White House officials, sparking a Department of Justice inquiry that became public this week.

              It is unclear whether the search by Biden aides to check for other potentially classified government documents has been completed yet.

              The White House did not comment on the discovery of a second set of documents.

              Sources also told ABC News that the original batch of documents found in November contains classified vice presidential briefing papers about foreign countries, some of which were marked top secret.

              The revelation of a second set of documents, first reported by NBC News, comes the same day that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to provide additional details about why classified documents were apparently improperly stored at Biden's old office at the Penn Biden Center.

              The preliminary DOJ inquiry into the possible mishandling of classified documents is focusing on how the documents got there and whether the president played a role.

              The preliminary investigation, involving the FBI and the DOJ, has been ongoing for several weeks and is nearing completion. Attorney General Merrick Garland has been briefed and a preliminary finding is expected to be in his hands in the coming weeks, according to sources familiar with the matter.

              Garland will face a decision about whether to launch a full-scale criminal investigation and whether to appoint a special counsel.


              Biden told reporters on Tuesday in Mexico, while meeting with North American leaders, that he didn't know what was in the records at the Penn Biden Center office and was "surprised to learn" they were there.
              ________

              A special counsel should be appointed IMO, hopefully that's exactly what AG Garland will do.

              Edit: There is already a US Attorney (a Trump appointee, no less) looking into the matter. If he finds enough evidence to support naming a special counsel, then so be it.
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • #8
                Garland appoints Robert Hur as special counsel to oversee Biden classified documents probe
                Hur, a former U.S. attorney from Maryland, will oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the documents found in two locations associated with President Biden.

                Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that he is appointing Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney from Maryland, as special prosecutor to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the discovery of classified documents found in two locations associated with President Biden.

                “I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity,” Garland said in a statement delivered from DOJ headquarters in Washington, D.C. “But under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter.”

                Garland had initially assigned John R. Lausch Jr., a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to oversee the case. But he said Lausch informed him that he will be leaving the Justice Department in early 2023, prompting Garland to appoint Hur to lead the probe after Lausch informed him that further investigation by a special counsel was warranted.

                “I am confident that Mr. Hur will carry out his responsibility in an evenhanded and urgent manner and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department,” Garland added.

                Earlier this week, the White House confirmed reports that a “small number” of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president had been found in his former office at the Penn Biden Center, a Washington think tank, on Nov. 2. According to the White House, Biden’s personal lawyers immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration after they discovered the first batch of documents while packing up his former office in Washington in November.

                On Wednesday, NBC News reported that additional Obama-era documents had been discovered at a separate location. The New York Times reported Thursday that the second batch of documents, also classified, had been found in a storage space in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home.

                It was not immediately clear when, exactly, the second set of documents was first located, but at Thursday’s press conference, Garland said Biden’s personal counsel had notified Lausch of the documents found in the garage in Wilmington on Dec. 20.

                Garland also said that Biden’s attorneys had called Lausch Thursday morning to inform him that an additional document with classification markings had been found in Biden’spersonal residence in Wilmington.

                Neither the White House nor Biden’s attorneys have not provided details on the exact number of documents, their classification level or what type of information they contained. At a press conference in Mexico City on Tuesday, Biden said he was “surprised to learn” about the classified documents found at his former office, and said, “I don’t know what’s in the documents.”

                Asked about the newly-discovered documents Thursday, Biden said that he is fully cooperating with the DOJ.

                Speaking on Thursday, President Biden told the press about a second set of classified documents from his days as vice president found in his possession, this time at his home in Wilmington, Del. Earlier this week, it was revealed that classified materials were found in November in a private office Biden used after his term as vice president.

                “People know I take classified documents and classified material seriously,” Biden said. “We're cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department's review. As part of that process, my lawyers reviewed other places where documents from my time as vice president were stored and they finished the review last night. They discovered a small number of documents with classified markings in storage areas and file cabinets in my home and in my personal library.

                “As was done in the case of the Biden Penn Center, the Department of Justice was immediately notified and the lawyers arranged for the Department of Justice to possession of the documents,” the president added.

                Many conservatives quickly drew comparisons between the documents discovered by Biden’s attorneys and the several boxes of classified materials former President Donald Trump had taken with him after leaving the White House, which prompted a criminal inquiry and a raid by federal agents on his South Florida residence last summer.

                According to the Justice Department, FBI agents were sent to search Mar-a-Lago only after attorneys for Trump repeatedly failed to return presidential records, including dozens of classified documents, that had been removed from the White House following the end of his term in January 2021 — even after receiving a grand jury subpoena in May 2022. Attorneys for the government have said that the documents recovered during the Mar-a-Lago raid were “likely concealed and removed” from a storage room as part of an effort to “obstruct the government’s investigation” into the potential mishandling of classified materials.

                Back in November, Garland announced that he had appointed a special counsel, veteran prosecutor Jack Smith, to oversee the department’s investigations involving Trump, including the classified documents probe.

                Trump responded to news of the special prosecutor’s appointment in the Biden case in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform.

                "Merrick Garland has to immediately end [the] Special Counsel investigation into anything related to me because I did everything right, and appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Joe Biden who hates Biden as much as Jack Smith hates me," the former president wrote.
                ___________

                Excellent news. So nice to have an unbiased Attorney General with integrity for a change.
                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                Comment


                • #9
                  Still a distraction the US doesn't need. Trump and his supports are going to throw so much political chaff in the air it's not funny.
                  Last edited by Monash; 14 Jan 23,, 03:21.
                  If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Monash View Post
                    Still a distraction the US doesn't need. Trump and his supports are going to throw so much political chaff in the air it's not funny.
                    Maybe, but I'm curious to see how harsh their demands for punishment will be given Trump's (not-so) "parallel" predicament with classified records.
                    "Draft beer, not people."

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Red Team View Post

                      Maybe, but I'm curious to see how harsh their demands for punishment will be given Trump's (not-so) "parallel" predicament with classified records.
                      Trump declassified those stolen documents with the power of his very stable genius mind, so the situation is totally different.

                      I've already seen Jack Smith being called a "criminal" online....his crime of course is investigating the Orange Cult Leader.
                      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by TopHatter View Post

                        Trump declassified those stolen documents with the power of his very stable genius mind, so the situation is totally different.

                        I've already seen Jack Smith being called a "criminal" online....his crime of course is investigating the Orange Cult Leader.
                        TH,

                        Rightfully so of course, as the president has carte blanche to declassify anything he wants.....wait
                        "Draft beer, not people."

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Red Team View Post

                          TH,

                          Rightfully so of course, as the president has carte blanche to declassify anything he wants.....wait
                          Oh totally. Anything at all. And there's not any formal procedure either, you just think about it and *snap* the job's a game, thank you Mary Poppins!
                          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Looks like and sounds like a big rush to pack his belongings at the end while he was super busy and a lack of attention from the National Archives typical of how many tend to see the office of the V.P.

                            __________________________________________________ _________________________________________

                            Biden’s whirlwind final days as vice president had aides scrambling to close his White House office

                            WashingtonCNN —
                            The early days of 2017 were a whirlwind for Vice President Joe Biden: swearing in a new Congress, a surprise Medal of Freedom, a speech at Davos and one final trip to Ukraine.

                            Partly to wrap up his policy portfolios, partly to tout his accomplishments, and partly to occupy himself following the death of his son a year earlier, Biden thrust himself into work in a final sprint to mark what then appeared to be the end of a four-decade run at the highest levels of government.

                            As Biden was busy keeping busy, however, his office was shutting down. Aides scrambled to pack up his workspaces in the West Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and at his official residence, the Naval Observatory.

                            Those competing objectives – to use his office until the final minutes even as it was obliged to shut down – made for a muddled and hurried process that left aides packing boxes of documents and papers late into the night, even as more material kept arriving.

                            Exactly how a small batch of classified documents ended up in boxes of Biden’s personal effects remains an open question. The White House and the now-president’s lawyers have refused to say who, precisely, packed and moved the material. Those questions are now central to a special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of classified material after leaving the White House in 2017.

                            At a minimum, however, the placement of the secret documents alongside “personal and political papers” reveals a records retention process gone awry. It was a manilla folder marked “VP personal” that contained one of the classified documents that was first discovered last November by the Biden attorney setting off the chain of events, according to one person familiar with the find.

                            Among the items from Biden’s time as vice president are 10 classified documents including US intelligence memorandums and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, according to that person.

                            There was also a memo from Biden to President Barack Obama, as well as two briefing memos preparing Biden for phone calls – one with the British prime minister, the other with Donald Tusk, the former prime minister of Poland who served as president of the European Council from 2014-2019. It’s unclear how much of this material remains sensitive.

                            Former aides and others familiar with the process of Biden’s transition out of government service describe a serious effort to follow the law made difficult by an unusually active final stretch.

                            “That made the process very disjointed – not because people weren’t capable, but because it wasn’t some straight line out of the White House,” a source with direct knowledge of the process said. “The day-to-day almost accelerated in those final days. Throughout, people were trying to ensure he still had what he needed, while also trying to pack in moments he wasn’t there.”

                            The packing was carried out by members of Biden’s staff, including lower-level aides and assistants who were provided boxes to store the vice president’s things.

                            Among the aides working in Biden’s office at the time were his chief of staff Steve Ricchetti, senior adviser Mike Donilon and communications director Kate Bedingfield, who now all hold senior roles in Biden’s White House. But according to people familiar with the matter, it was lower-level staffers who carried out most of the actual packing of Biden’s belongings and documents, including his executive assistant Kathy Chung, who now works at the Pentagon, as well as other personal aides.

                            Chung was interviewed in the probe of classified documents found in Biden’s personal offices, according to a defense official. She did not respond to CNN’s attempts to contact her.

                            The chaotic closing days

                            Those closing days of Biden’s vice presidency were a flurry of packing mementos, photographs and personal papers, people familiar with the matter say. Though most of Biden’s files and documents were turned over to the National Archives in a process that began several weeks before he left office, last minute work continued up until the hours he departed the White House for Donald Trump’s inauguration.

                            The looming arrival of Trump to the White House left many of Obama and Biden’s aides wary of the future and eager to cement many of their accomplishments. It was an uneasy moment, according to many who lived through it.

                            “It was just a really really weird time for everyone,” the source familiar said.

                            The steady pace of official events Biden maintained in the final days made the process of packing his office more difficult, according to former aides. Each high-profile meeting required a briefing memo – often containing classified information important for the President to know before sitting down with foreign leaders.

                            In just the final five days of his vice presidency, Biden met in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and in Switzerland with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He spoke by phone with the prime minister of Iraq two days before leaving office. And earlier in the week he held calls with the president of Kosovo and the prime minister of Japan. As his team worked in Washington to ensure all the classified material in his offices were properly packed and submitted to the government, more classified documents continued to arrive.

                            “Documents and briefings are always coming in and it didn’t slow down, even when the boxes were being packed,” another person familiar with the process said.

                            Aides worked into the night to complete the packing, according to a person familiar with the matter, to avoid interfering with Biden’s continued use of his offices.

                            “We had clear Presidential Records Act guidelines – everyone did – in terms of how to close things down,” one of the people familiar with the matter said. “The people who actually needed to pay attention to them definitely did. For most of us it wasn’t some all-consuming thing, but obviously for those responsible for the vice president’s stuff, it was a big deal and they treated it as such.”

                            The process of packing Biden’s office operated separately from the effort underway to pack and preserve Obama’s records, some of which were sent to a temporary facility in Illinois. Biden’s office dealt directly and separately with the National Archives to ensure the vice president’s records were turned over, according to a former administration official.

                            While the National Archives sends staff members to the White House to gather files and papers of the President, they do not treat all vice presidential papers with the same high regard, officials said.

                            Staff members from the vice president’s office are often left to sort through papers themselves, officials say, rather than specialists from the Archives. While classified documents hold the same level of secrecy for presidents, vice presidents and anyone with proper security clearance to handle them, officials say, it would be easier for papers outside the Oval Office to be mixed up or left behind.

                            Many of the boxes of personal items – not deemed covered by the records requirements to submit to the National Archives – were transported from the vice president’s office to a temporary facility about one block away from the White House, run by the General Services Administration. From there, they went to another temporary office before eventually being moved to the offices of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank Biden opened in early 2018.

                            “GSA’s support is available for six months after the end of their term of office; while Former Presidents then go on to receive lifetime support from GSA, former Vice Presidents do not,” a GSA spokesperson told CNN. “In 2017, GSA provided approximately 5,300 usable square feet of office space to the Outgoing Vice President’s transition team at 1717 Pennsylvania Ave, NW. The Outgoing Vice President’s transition team vacated the space on July 21, 2017.”

                            Biden on the move

                            But in those hectic final days of his term, as boxing and cataloging was underway at the White House, Biden was on the move. Obama kicked off the closing week of his administration with a surprise for his partner: bestowing the prestigious Medal of Freedom to Biden in a ceremony in the State Dining Room that brought the vice president to tears.

                            It was designed to be a farewell to public life, which the medal’s citation clearly stated: “A grateful nation thanks Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. for his lifetime of service on behalf of the United States of America.”

                            At the time, the notion of Biden running for president in 2020 wasn’t even a private consideration as he prepared to set off into the private sector for the first time of his adult life.

                            The morning after receiving the Medal of Freedom, Biden traveled to New York to appear on ABC’s “The View,” joining Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar at the talk show table as yet another stop in his victory lap of public service.

                            Biden then traveled to Kyiv, meeting with Poroshenko and wishing him well, saying: “I want to say what a privilege it has been to support and stand with Ukraine over these past 25 years, first as a senator and of late as vice president.”

                            And at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he delivered a valedictory address and met on the sidelines with Xi, whom he’d come to know when both men were serving as vice president.

                            Biden was intently focused on memorializing his work on Ukraine, according to former aides, as well as the other policy areas assigned to him by Obama.

                            Three days later, Biden was on hand for Trump’s inauguration. At noon on January 20, 2017, he was without the trappings of an office or a title in Washington for the first time in 44 years. He rode his beloved Amtrak back to his home in Wilmington.

                            Behind the scenes, a small contingent of aides to Biden were unpacking boxes and setting up a new house on Chain Bridge Road in McLean, Virginia, just outside Washington, a rental property where Alexander Haig, former chief of staff to Richard Nixon and Secretary of State to Ronald Reagan, once lived. It served as an office and a gathering point as Biden’s longtime advisers helped chart his new path, with his decision to challenge Trump and return to the White House not even a private consideration at the time.

                            https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/12/polit...ble/index.html

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                            • #15
                              Biden's Delaware home is now a player in document drama
                              WASHINGTON (AP) — It's President Joe Biden's refuge from Washington — a place that's part home office, part Sunday family dinner venue, a safe place for his treasured 1967 Corvette and a makeshift campaign studio during the COVID-19 pandemic.

                              Now, Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware, is coming under fresh scrutiny as a repository of classified material.

                              The White House confirmed Thursday that classified records were found in the garage of Biden's Wilmington home, as well as an adjacent room that the president later identified as his personal library. The disclosure came three days after the White House said similarly classified materials were located at Biden's former institute in Washington. The discoveries, taken together, prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to tap a special counsel to oversee the matter.

                              The announcement shines a brighter spotlight on Biden's Wilmington house, where he regularly spends the weekends and where he finds more freedom and a homier atmosphere than at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

                              “I said when I was running, I wanted to be president — not to live in the White House, but to be able to make the decisions about the future of the country,” Biden said in February 2021, just after he took office. Living in the White House, he said, is “a little like a gilded cage in terms of being able to walk outside and do things."

                              So far in his presidency, Biden has spent part or all of 194 days in his home state of Delaware, spending most weekends in either at his Wilmington home or in Rehoboth Beach, where he owns a $2.7 million home, according to an Associated Press tally. He will head to Wilmington again this weekend.

                              Despite an onslaught of criticism, particularly from Republicans, for regularly escaping to the state, White House officials say the time spent in Wilmington is important for a president who traveled home nightly during the 36 years he served as senator. Biden also can stand up presidential operations at home, where he regularly meets with advisers, and an aide from the National Security Council travels with the president during Wilmington weekends.

                              “Every president can work from anywhere they are, because that is how presidencies are equipped,” former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in February 2022, as Russia began invading Ukraine and Biden was preparing for another weekend in Wilmington. She confirmed that Biden can make secure calls from “anywhere he is, yes.”

                              Biden's custom-built Wilmington home, finished in 1998, is located in the tony Greenville section of the town and abuts a lake in a neighborhood where residents are now used to Secret Service vehicles and flashing motorcade lights. It's a brief drive to his home church, St. Joseph on the Brandywine, and a branch of the upscale grocery store Wegman's opened nearby in recent months.

                              The home is also a culmination of Biden's decades-long quest to establish the perfect family home and his self-admitted obsession with real estate. Over the years, he would purchase several homes in Delaware and later sell them at a profit.

                              “Joe has a very symmetrical eye, and if he had a million dollars he wouldn't be traveling, he would be putting it into his house,” his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, said in journalist Jules Witcover's biography of the president. The book, “Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption,” described him as an “admittedly frustrated architect.”

                              So meaningful is the home to the Bidens that when the former vice president floated the prospect of a second mortgage to pay for his ailing son Beau's expenses, then-President Barack Obama flatly refused “with a force that surprised me,” Biden wrote in his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.”

                              “I'll give you the money,” Obama said, in Biden's retelling. “I have it. You can pay me back whenever.”

                              Jill Biden has also written fondly about the home, describing its sunroom — covered in family mementos, campaign paraphernalia and artwork — as “one of my favorite places in the world.”

                              “The small room overlooks the lake behind our house, and I like to sit with my feet tucked up on the sofa, wrapped in a pashmina, grading papers there from my classes at Northern Virginia Community College, where I’ve taught English and writing for the last eleven years,” she wrote in her memoir, “Where the Light Enters.” "It’s a room made for homeyness and comfort.”

                              This haven for the Bidens quickly morphed into his de facto campaign headquarters in March 2020, when Americans were suddenly homebound with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and presidential candidates ditched in-person stumping for virtual roundtables and Zoom fundraisers. Biden would keep up the at-home campaigning much longer than his opponent, Donald Trump, stirring some heartburn among Democrats and prompting mockery from Republicans that Biden was tethered to his basement.

                              But it also allowed for an unusual glimpse into the personal home of the Bidens, as he fielded questions sitting in front of shelves stuffed with books and posted Instagram photos of him and Jill dyeing Easter eggs in their kitchen.

                              In May 2020, Biden was speaking to the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Victory Fund from home when he was repeatedly drowned out by squawking geese.

                              “There's a pond on the other side of my property,” Biden remarked. “A lot of Canadian geese. If you hear them honking away, they're cheering.”

                              The White House was pressed this week to disclose a visitors' log to Biden's personal home, but it's unclear whether one even exists. Aside from family members and close advisers, there is little public knowledge about who comes in and out of Biden's home, particularly when he is handling presidential business.

                              One exception was Sen. Joe Manchin.

                              In October 2021, Biden personally invited the influential West Virginia Democrat, as well as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to his home for breakfast and a tour of the property — a move seen as a deeply personal gesture from a president struggling to court Manchin on the Democrats' massive social spending package that fall. Manchin would go on to extinguish those efforts two months later, and a furious White House responded that Manchin made a commitment to Biden “at his home in Wilmington," portraying the senator's announcement as a personal betrayal.

                              Now Biden's home is again becoming a bit player in a political headache for the White House.

                              Garland said Thursday that the Justice Department was told Dec. 20 by Biden's personal lawyer that classified material was found in the president's Wilmington garage. Further, DOJ was notified Thursday that another record with classified markings was found elsewhere in the Wilmington home.

                              Asked about the disclosures Thursday, Biden kept his comments relatively brief, saying he will speak more on this “soon” and that he takes classified material seriously.

                              But Biden also wanted to make one thing about his house explicitly clear.

                              “By the way, my Corvette's in a locked garage, OK?” he said. “So it's not like it's sitting out in the street.”

                              ___

                              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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