Sunday 24 / November / 2024
Washington: Aides to US President Joe Biden have discovered at least one more batch of classified documents in a location separate from a think tank office he used after serving as vice president, US news outlets reported on Wednesday.
According to a report by broadcaster NBC News, the president's aides have been searching for additional classified materials that might be in other locations since a set of classified documents was found in November at a Washington-based think tank.
The NBC News report said the classification level, number and precise location of the additional documents were not immediately clear.
Senator Mark Warner, the Intelligence Committee's Democratic chairman, has asked for a briefing on the first Biden document discovery, he said on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Senator Marco Rubio, the committee's Republican vice chair, said Rubio and Warner had written to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, asking for access to the classified documents.
The two senators also requested a damage assessment by the intelligence community and a briefing on the retention of classified documents by both Biden, a Democrat, and Republican former President Donald Trump.
The reports come two days after a White House lawyer said a dozen classified documents from Biden's vice presidential days had been discovered in November by the president's personal attorneys at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement think tank.
Biden kept an office there after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his Democratic presidential campaign in 2019.
Biden's attorneys informed the US National Archives of their discovery, turned over the materials and said they were cooperating with the Archives and the Justice Department. The president also said on Tuesday he and his team were cooperating fully with a review into what happened.
