California Democrat Representative Adam Schiff said he hasn’t ruled out the possibility that national security may have been compromised by President Joe Biden’s careless handling of classified documents.
The representative appeared on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday after a third set of classified documents was located at the President’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
Jonathan Karl from ABD asked Schiff if it was possible national security had been jeopardized — an assessment Rep. Schiff made after classified documents were seized from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August.
“I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” said Schiff. “We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents. I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the [Penn Biden Center] as well as the home of President Biden.”
Richard Sauber, White House lawyer, said over the weekend that six pages of classified documents were located during the search of the President’s private library. The announcement followed the discovery of documents in November in Biden’s former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington and in December in his garage.
Former attorney appointed to investigate docs mishandling
The mishandling of official records from the Obama administration and classified documents is under investigation by Robert Hur, former U.S. attorney, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday.
“I’d like to know what these documents were. I’d like to know what the [special counsel’s] assessment is, whether there was any risk of exposure and what the harm would be and whether any mitigation needs to be done,” said Schiff. “I think that would be appropriate and consistent with what we requested in the case of Mar-a-Lago.”
Previously, Sauber said the White House is “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”
The statement from Sauber didn’t explain why the White House hesitated and didn’t provide an account of the number of classified documents. The administration is already facing fierce scrutiny for waiting more than two months to reveal the discovery of the first group of documents at Biden’s office.
Rep. Schiff said he would “reserve judgment” when asked whether the President’s administration should have disclosed the documents sooner.
“I think it’s important to point out that the Biden approach was very different in the sense that it looks — as far as we can tell — that these documents were in these locations,” said Schiff.
