Three weeks before classified documents were discovered at the Biden Penn Center, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) said it had custody of the “presidential records” from the Obama administration, and that reports claiming otherwise were “misleading.”
NARA, the federal agency that preserves government records, issued the statement Oct. 11 and said it had all the presidential records from the administrations of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, as well.
“Reports that indicate or imply that those Presidential records were in the possession of the former Presidents or their representatives, after they left office, or that the records were housed in substandard conditions, are false and misleading,” the statement read.
CBS issued a report Jan. 10 revealing that President Joe Biden’s lawyers discovered classified documents from the Obama era at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank where Biden had an office, on Nov. 2.
Screenshot/ Twitter/ Joe Biden
Biden’s special counsel, Richard Sauber, told CBS that the president’s lawyers notified NARA of the documents the same day, and that they later took possession of the documents.
More classified documents were discovered at Biden’s personal residence in Delaware on Dec. 20 following a search by Biden’s lawyers. On Wednesday and Thursday, additional documents were found at the Delaware house. (RELATED: Five Additional Pages Of Classified Documents Found At Biden’s Delaware Home)
The White House has refused to say why the administration waited months to come forward about the documents, with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claiming that there’s an ongoing “process.”
The White House also said that there are no visitor logs of who met with Biden at the Delaware house, and a document from Hunter Biden’s laptop appears to show that the first son paid his father nearly $50,000 per month to stay on the property in 2017 and 2018.