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President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he was surprised to learn that classified documents were found in a think-tank office he once used and said he and his team are cooperating fully with a review into what happened.
Biden told reporters at a joint news conference with the leaders of Mexico and Canada that he takes classified documents seriously. He said he did not know what was in the documents.
“We are cooperating fully with the review, which I hope will be finished soon,” Biden said.
A Democrat, Biden has faced criticism from Republicans after his Justice Department launched an investigation last year into Republican former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents discovered at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The cases differ in several ways.
Biden’s attorneys discovered fewer than a dozen classified records inside the office at the think-tank and informed the U.S. National Archives of their discovery, turned over the materials, and said they were cooperating with the Archives and the Justice Department.
Biden periodically used the think-tank office space from mid-2017, after his term as vice president for Democratic President Barack Obama ended, until the start of his 2020 presidential campaign.
By contrast, Trump kept thousands of government records, a few hundred of which were marked as classified, inside his Florida residence for more than a year after departing the White House, and did not return them immediately or willingly despite numerous requests by the National Archives.
