A precarious position for Vice President Joe Biden is on the verge of deteriorating worse.
Multiple news sites, including Fox News and The New York Times, report that the president’s attorneys have verified the discovery of a third batch of sensitive materials in his Wilmington, Delaware home.
The first batch of secret documents was discovered at Biden’s former office in the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement building in Washington, D.C. on November 2, a week before the autumn midterm elections, but the news about them was not made until this week. This sparked the search for other records, and a second batch was discovered this week at Biden’s residence in Delaware.
This third batch may now also be linked to Biden’s residence in Wilmington.
According to Fox News, president’s special counsel Richard Sauber discovered a total of six sensitive papers inside Biden’s residence. This most recent batch included five of the six papers in question.
According to Sauber, when Biden’s personal attorneys discovered the first classified document at Biden’s residence on Wednesday, they terminated their investigation owing to a lack of security clearance.
Sauber, armed with the necessary clearance levels, reassessed the situation in Delaware.
“Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday evening to facilitate providing the document the President’s personal counsel found on Wednesday to the Justice Department,” Sauber said.
Sauber said the Department of Justice “immediately took possession” of the classified documents.
“While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,” he said, Fox reported. “The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.”
According to a source for The New York Times, Sauber’s finding occurred only hours after the White House addressed the documents found in the Delaware residence for the first time.
The Times also reported that Biden’s senior personal attorney, Bob Bauer, stated that the president’s legal team has attempted to be honest while adhering to “the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.
Regardless of the reasoning behind how this situation has so far been handled, the revelation of these classified documents has been a PR disaster for the president.
Even CBS Television, a normally left-leaning news network, found it difficult to defend the White House’s handling of this incident.
WATCH: CBS News' @edokeefe seeks answers from WH Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, after additional documents with classified markings were found in Pres. Biden's home. pic.twitter.com/mgLwWuLdZ0
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 12, 2023
Biden’s assertion that the Wilmington documents were “in a locked garage” and not “on the street” has not helped the issue.
.@pdoocy: "Classified materials next to your Corvette?
What were you thinking?"President Biden: "I'm going to get a chance to speak on all of this, god-willing, soon…My Corvette's in a locked garage, okay? So, it's not like they're sitting out on the street…" pic.twitter.com/1gVvJo0dfH
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 12, 2023
The manner in which Biden previously reprimanded former President Donald Trump for his own incident using sensitive information at Mar-a-Lago during a September edition of “60 Minutes” has added to this entire difficulty.
“How that could possibly happen?” Biden had said. “How anyone could be that irresponsible? And I thought, ‘What data was in there that may compromise sources and methods?’”