The White House –
The White House faced a fresh wave of criticism on Tuesday after announcing that lawyers had found a third batch of classified documents in the president’s private home.
Administration officials stressed that they are cooperative with investigators and transparent with the public, contrasting their behavior with that of former President Donald Trump.
However, in a half-hour conversation with reporters, White House spokesman Ian Sams declined to give details beyond the few the government has already reported on the unknown number of documents found in private offices and homes of President Joe Biden were found.
And while White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answered several questions on the matter, she repeatedly stressed that the White House would not divulge too many details while an investigation was underway. Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s possible misuse of classified documents.
“While we may be compelled to provide a lot of facts during this investigation, we say very openly that we are working with the Justice Department,” said Sams, special assistant to the president and senior counsel in the White House Office of the Council. “And that’s such a stark contrast. I mean, you listen to these House Republicans…they feign outrage about disclosure and transparency.”
On Saturday, White House Attorney Richard Sauber reported that six pages of classified documents found in Biden’s private library in Wilmington, Delaware, were immediately turned over to the Justice Department.
Several documents were previously found in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington home and others in a former office of his in Washington.
Biden expressed surprise after the initial findings were announced, but said he didn’t know “what these documents contain.”
Last year, the Justice Department removed about 300 documents of varying degrees of security from Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home.
In Tuesday’s call with reporters, the White House did not provide comprehensive answers as to why it had taken days and weeks to announce the discovery of the documents and other factors in the search process, or whether Biden would testify directly before the special counsel.
Trump said on his social network that he had done nothing wrong in his case and that as president he had the right to “declassify.” He also stated that “Mar-a-Lago is a high security site, with cameras everywhere and guarded by personnel (and) our awesome intelligence agency. I have INFO on all of them!”
James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement Saturday, “The White House, the National Archives and the Justice Department have failed to promptly notify Congress and the American people of the misuse of classified documents from Joe Biden’s day Vice President.
When asked if the White House would cooperate with Congress, Sams said the letters “have been reviewed and a decision will be made in due course.”
Walter Shaub, a member of the Project on Government Oversight, said in an email to the Voice of America that although the administration correctly notified the Justice Department of the discovery of the documents, “everything would have gone better for the Biden White House if it had done a better job of communicating with the public.”
“You should have at least been more direct with all the relevant details when the press started asking about” the documents.
According to Shaub, it was “perhaps understandable that the administration did not immediately alert the public” when it discovered the documents, but “at one point they owed the public this information”.
“It would have been very nice if the government had made an announcement before the press knew that President Biden had discovered secret records in his possession… It was a breach of public trust,” he added.
Connect to the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel youtube and enable notifications or follow us on social networks: Facebook, Twitter and instagram.