President Joe Biden claimed in a “60 Minutes” interview aired Sunday he has not been briefed on the top-secret documents found in the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
CBS’ Scott Pelley asked Biden if anyone had approached him warning that “important national security secrets” were revealed by the document’s storage there. Biden said, “I have not personally spoken to anyone in that regard.”
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“I’m sure, my administration is aware of all of that, and so is the National Security Council, but I have not,” he added. Pelley probed, “And you don’t know what was in those documents?”
“I have not asked for the specifics of those documents because I don’t want to get myself in the middle of whether or not the Justice Department should move or not move on certain actions they can take,” Biden said. “I’ve agreed I would not tell them what to do and not in fact engage in telling them how to prosecute or not.” (RELATED: FBI Announces Arrest Over Bomb Threat At Boston Children’s Hospital)
Biden’s purported distance from the documents raises questions about their national security significance.
The president is sent briefing material on national security matters daily, according to the National Intelligence Director’s Office. Former National Security Council member Stephen Slick told ABC News in 2020 the President’s daily brief “is simply a brief compilation of the most important intelligence information and analysis that the [intelligence community] believes should be shared with the president.”
Biden claimed he wondered “how that could possibly happen” and “how anyone could be that irresponsible” when he saw an FBI photo of top-secret documents arranged on the floor at Mar-a-Lago. He reported thinking, “What data was in there that may compromise sources and methods. By that I mean, names of people who helped or et cetera.”
60 Minutes YouTube Channel/Screenshot
The president denied being notified of the search warrant’s execution “ahead of time.” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Aug. 11 he had “personally approved” the raid, despite a senior Biden official previously telling Newsweek he had no prior knowledge of it.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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