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A trove of newly released emails hints that President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal is larger than first thought, according to a report published on Saturday.
The emails, which were released by the National Archives, make references to Biden’s attorneys handing boxes of documents over in Boston, “confirming a little-known detail in the chronology of [his] “classified documents scandal,” the New York Post reported.
“Please ensure that the boxes in your office in Boston remain secure in a locked space and are not accessed by anyone,” National Archives official Gary Stern wrote on Nov. 7 in an email to Biden lawyers Patrick Moore and Bob Bauer.
The Post reported that the email was sent five days after the president’s attorneys said they found classified documents at his Penn Biden Center office in Washington, D.C., which he used after leaving the vice presidency.
In January, CNN reported that Moore sent some documents found at the DC location to his law office in Boston before he found classified records. Those were not believed to contain any classified information, the outlet reported then. But the newly uncovered emails “raise questions about the nature of the documents given the protocols requested by the National Archives,” The Post added.
Stern, in a Nov. 8 email to Bauer and Moore, wrote, “we would like to pick up the boxes that are in your Boston office and move them to the JFK Library. Would it be possible to do that tomorrow?”
“Yes, it would,” Moore said in response. “I will still be in DC, so I will link you with my colleague [redacted], with whom you may have dealt in the past on other matters related to the Kennedy archives.”
The Post noted further:
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday afternoon that she knew nothing about the Boston boxes and referred questions to White House counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams, who did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The White House has repeatedly concealed information about the scandal, which last month led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Hur to determine if Biden or anyone in his orbit broke the law.
The White House hid the initial discovery more than two months — until well after the Nov. 8 midterm elections, in which former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of records was a major issue following an Aug. 8 FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The president publicly acknowledged the discovery of classified materials at the Penn Biden Center during a Jan. 10 press conference in Mexico City. But he only did so after CBS News broke the story a day earlier. In those initial remarks, Biden said nothing about a second set of classified documents discovered on Dec. 20 by his legal team in the garage of his Wilmington, Del., home, giving off the impression that the documents at the DC office were the only ones.
Since the second discovery, multiple aides who worked for then-VP Biden towards the end of the Obama administration have been questioned by federal law enforcement officials, NBC News reported.
“Kathy Chung, who was Biden’s executive assistant while he was vice president and helped pack up his vice presidential office in January 2017, is among those who have been interviewed, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing inquiry. Chung currently serves as deputy director of protocol for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin,” the report said.
A source familiar with the interviews said that the feds asked for the interviews to be compiled “quickly.”
“The people who were boxing [up the vice presidential office] had no idea that there was anything in there that shouldn’t leave the White House,” they said. “There was no decision made to take certain documents that should have been presidential records or classified.”
Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy questioned Biden over his handling of the second batch of classified documents.
“Classified materials next to your Corvette?! What were you thinking?” he asked.
“My Corvette’s in a locked garage, so it’s not like it’s sitting on the street,” the president said.
“So the material was in a locked garage?” Doocy followed up.
“Yes— as well as my Corvette,” the president said.
