As Senator Ted Cruz tweeted: “Joe Biden's FAA grounded every plane and he says he doesn’t know why. We learned he held classified docs in his private Penn Biden Center office, and he says the news took him by surprise. And his admin floated a gas stove ban & was shamed into retracting. It's just Wednesday.”.And there’s more — more classified documents were found by aides to the president in a location separate from the Washington office he used after leaving the Obama administration, as first reported by NBC News..At a press briefing late Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer questions about the new discovery, referring reporters to White House counsel. The Justice Department also had no comment..The classification level, number and precise location of the additional documents have not yet been made clear. What is also still unknown is when the additional documents were discovered and if the search for any other classified materials Biden may have from the Obama administration is complete..Since November, after the discovery of documents with classified markings in his Penn Biden Centre office, Biden aides have been sifting through documents stored at locations beyond his former Washington office to determine if there are any other classified documents somewhere..Any and all documents need, by law, to be turned over to the National Archives and reviewed by the Justice Department..On Tuesday, speaking from Mexico City, Biden said he was “surprised” to learn there were classified documents in his Penn Centre office and that he didn't know what was in the documents..However, Jeanine Pirro, a co-host on The Five on Fox News, and a former judge, said in order for documents to be moved “somebody has to request that they be removed for those documents to be in the one location and now two locations” suggesting it’s unlikely Biden did not know any documents had been moved and just as unlikely he didn’t know what they contained..Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., reacted on social media minutes after the NBC News report on the new documents, tweeting out the words, "Special counsel" calling for an immediate investigation..The chair and vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee have written to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines (R-Mt.) asking for access to the classified documents, a damage assessment by the intelligence community and a briefing on both the Biden and Trump documents, three congressional staffers said. .The request is similar to how the committee requested information after the raid at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump's resort in Florida, the staffers said..Questions have been raised about the timing of the announcement of finding the initial documents, which was on Nov. 2, six days before the mid-term elections, with suggestions by Republicans the announcement was delayed so as not to potentially affect the mid-terms..The documents were discovered in a locked closet by Biden’s attorneys while they prepared to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement Monday..Sauber said Biden's lawyers immediately reached out to National Archives about the find, and the agency took control of the documents the next day..The Archives referred the matter to the Justice Department..US Attorney General Merrick Garland has asked John R. Lausch, US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and a holdover Trump appointee, to review how the classified material ended up in the closet..Democrats are poo-pooing the discovery of the Biden papers, saying there are not near as many as the number of documents taken from Trump's home during the FBI raid in August.
