Speaker 1 (00:00):
The White House and the US Justice Department have declined to comment on reports that another batch of classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as Vice President has been found in an unsecured location. It comes two days after it was revealed that a small dossier of similar papers were discovered at the office of a Washington think tank. Here is our North America correspondent Peter Bowes.
Peter Bowes (00:22):
This is the second batch of documents relating to Joe Biden during his time as Vice President under Barack Obama. And it follows the initial discovery, that the White House acknowledged earlier this week, that an initial batch of documents were found at a separate location. This was a think tank where Joe Biden had a private office in the time after he left office, and he worked there for some time. Now, Joe Biden himself said he was surprised at that discovery, he didn’t know what was in those documents, and that the White House was cooperating with the investigation. The White House, indeed the Justice Department also, have had nothing to say about the reports of the second batch of documents being discovered. Now, this is potentially politically sensitive, perhaps even awkward for the Biden administration and the White House, given the fact that former President Trump is still under investigation over a very similar scenario, although different because many, many more documents were involved. But those documents that were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, that investigation continues.
(01:36)
There is the possibility that criminal charges could be brought against former President Trump, and that’s why this is growing into an issue that is indeed politically sensitive.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Here’s CBS correspondent Jarred Hill on how the news is being received in America.
Jarred Hill (01:53):
The reaction has been interesting across the political spectrum here in the United States, as well as outside of the political world. When it comes to Republicans here, they are really looking at this and saying, “Is this not the same thing that happened with former President Donald Trump back in August of last year, where we saw that, the search of his home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida?” One of the big differences with that though is that there had been an ongoing back and forth for months between former President Trump and the National Archives here in the United States to get ahold of some of those documents that they knew Trump had in his custody and that Trump was refusing to hand over. This is a question here at this point of exactly what did President Biden, then the Vice President at the time, have in his possession? Why did he have these documents in these locations? And was this a situation of staffers bringing something that they shouldn’t have to an office, or was he holding these for a particular reason?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Jarred Hill.