The discovery of classified documents at the President’s Delaware home and old D.C. office throws a wrench into his 2024 plans
BY BRIAN BENNETT
The Brief
THE DISCOVERY OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS AT Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former D.C. office tarnishes the President politically at a moment when he was hoping voters would credit him for a resilient job market and signs that inflation is easing.
Parallels were immediately drawn to a separate investigation into a trove of classified documents the FBI seized in August at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.
While there are significant differences between the two cases, the investigation into how documents with classification markings ended up stored in Biden’s vacated Penn Biden Center office in Washington and a storage space in his personal garage in Wilmington, Del., threatens to undercut the larger, bipartisan effort to label Trump as unqualified for the presidency, which he’s already announced he will seek again in 2024. His critics argued the hundreds of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago provided another example of Trump being a politician who regards himself as above the law. It’s a narrative that Trump has promoted by baselessly asserting the 2020 election was “stolen” and by fomenting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to keep him in office.
The investigation into Biden makes any potential decision to charge Trump for obstructing the Mar-a-Lago probe more politically fraught. It also opens up another avenue for Republicans who now control the House to investigate Biden, and to keep the story of Biden’s classified documents in front of voters as Biden mulls formally announcing a reelection campaign.
SPEAKING AT THE WHITE HOUSE on Jan. 12 during an event to showcase his economic policy, Biden was asked about the revelation that his lawyers found more classified documents in his Wilmington home, in addition to the documents found on Nov. 2 in his former D.C. office—a fact the White House kept quiet until CBS News broke the story on Jan. 9. “They discovered a small number of documents with classified markings in storage areas and file cabinets in my home and my personal library,” Biden said. Asked by a Fox News reporter what he was thinking, keeping classified materials in his garage next to his Corvette, Biden said, “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.”
The Department of Justice was “immediately notified,” Biden said, and his lawyers arranged for the federal government to take “immediate po
