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President Joe Biden said he was “surprised” when classified documents were found in a closet in his former office and portrayed it as an honest mistake, but when another batch was found in his garage, pressure has mounted to explain what is fast becoming a crisis of credibility for the White House.
From popping up in a locked closet in a Washington think tank to being discovered in the president’s garage where he keeps his classic Corvette, the sensitive materials have sparked public interest and drawn legal scrutiny.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the case while Republicans have alleged a two-tier justice system where former President Donald Trump—who faces his own classified document probe—is seen as being treated more harshly while Biden supposedly with kid gloves.
“Where is the FBI raid on the Joe Biden crime family after the revelations that he stole classified materials while serving as Vice President and stored these documents at Biden’s ‘think tank,’” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who serves on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview.
She was referring to the FBI executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and seizing thousands of documents, including some marked classified and top secret.
The White House is facing growing criticism for not disclosing the find of the Biden-linked documents until two months after their discovery on Nov. 2—a week before the midterm election—and even then the Biden administration only publicly acknowledged the materials after media outlets broke the story.
House Republicans are demanding answers, launching an investigation, and pointing to a link between the address where the second batch of classified documents were found and the president’s son, Hunter Biden, who’s under federal investigation for various financial and business dealings.
Below is a timeline of the disclosures and discoveries regarding Biden’s classified documents and where things could go from here.2017
Biden started working at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania in February 2017, after leaving office as Vice President under the Obama administration.
He served as a professor at the think tank, whose stated goal is to foster a deeper understanding of U.S. foreign policy and to develop new ideas for advancing America’s diplomatic and global leadership.
There have been concerns about possible links between the center and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The University of Pennsylvania, which houses the Biden Penn Center, received over $54 million between 2014 and 2019 in anonymous donations from China, according to the New York Post, citing public records.
A spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania denied that any money from China was funneled to the center.
“The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center,” spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy told the New York Post.
Biden stopped working at the center around the time he became president.2022
According to Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, attorneys representing Biden found a “small number” of records with classified markings inside a locked closet at the think tank office—roughly 10 documents—and then notified the National Archives of their discovery in short order.
Biden’s lawyers transferred the documents to the National Archives for secure storage one day after their discovery, Sauber said in a statement on Jan. 9, noting that the president’s attorneys were cooperating with the Archives and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The Office of the Inspector General at the National Archives reached out to a prosecutor at the Department of Justice on Nov.
