By Mattis Ahlgrimm
Since November 2022, multiple classified documents have been discovered in several private locations of President Joe Biden. To fully understand the dimension of this case, it is best to take a quick look back over the latest happenings before predicting the future forthgoing of this process. On November 2, “a small amount” of classified documents was found in the President’s office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. In the following days, the Justice Department started a “preliminary inquiry” on the case on November 10 after having been informed by the National Archives. Over a month later, on December 20, a second set of classified documents was discovered in the garage of Biden’s private house in Wilmington, Delaware. The finding of the documents at Penn Biden Center was first publicly announced by CBS report on January 9. Although the report was confirmed by the White House, there was no talk of other documents having been discovered until January 11, when NBC reported about the finding of a second set of documents without being able to specify the location of the discovery. Finally, the White House acknowledged the confiscation of the documents found in Biden’s garage on January 12 and additionally announced that six more classified pages had been found at the same location. On January 21 half a dozen more documents were impounded during a 13-hour consensual search at the President’s house in Wilmington, Delaware. The crux of the matter is that all of the confiscated documents seem to be in reference to Biden’s work as Barack Obama’s Vice President until 2017 which is why he was no longer allowed to keep them in his personal property. Nevertheless the case seems to show parallels to the discovery of classified documents at Former President Trump’s house in Mar-a-Lago in 2022, however, there are several eminent differences. Not only is it questionable if Joe Biden even knew about the documents being stored in his office and house in the first place, he and his lawyers have also been working cooperatively with the Justice Department from the beginning to clear the case as quickly as possible. Furthermore, only small amounts of documents were found in his house while over 400 classified documents were discovered in Trump’s personal property. Regardless, a special counsel has been founded to further investigate Biden’s case and is optimistic to be able to clarify the whole issue shortly.
