The FBI and DOJ Knew Biden Was Illegally In Possession of Classified Documents Before the Midterms -- But Covered It Up Until Yesterday

The American Stasi must be defunded. And prosecuted.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden's vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney's inquiry.

The material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden's personal attorneys "were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.," Sauber said in a statement to CBS News. The documents were contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers, the sources said. The sources revealed neither what the documents contain nor their level of classification. A source familiar with the matter told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear secrets.

Sauber also said that on the same day the material was discovered, Nov. 2, the White House counsel's office notified the National Archives, which took possession of the materials the following morning.

"The discovery of these documents was made by the President's attorneys," Sauber said. "The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives. Since that discovery, the President's personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives."

A source familiar with the matter said representatives from the National Archives then notified the Justice Department.

No one is commenting.

The Penn Biden Center and the University of Pennsylvania did not respond to a request for comment. The National Archives declined to comment. Attorneys assigned to oversee Biden's vice presidential records, Robert Lenhard, James Garland and Dana Remus, did not reply to voice messages and an email seeking comment. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment.

A source familiar said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is aware of the Justice Department inquiry. The ODNI also declined to comment.

Trump and Republicans -- some Republicans, at least; not Mitch McConnell, God knows -- are objecting strenuouly.

Former President Donald Trump commented on the CBS News story Monday night, asking on his Truth Social app, "When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified."

Trump was alluding to the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate.

GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called the recovery of documents with classified markings from Mr. Biden's time as vice president "very concerning." He added, "He's had these classified [documents], and what has he said about the other president with classified documents?" Asked if this instance is different because attorneys found them and "immediately" handed the material over, McCarthy replied, "Oh, really? They just now found them after all those years."

Rep. James Comer, the incoming House Oversight Committee chairman, had questions when he learned of the documents. "What's the difference in what President Trump did versus what we now know President Biden did," he wondered. "We want to know exactly what documents were taken by both President Trump and now President Biden and want to know if they're gonna treat President Biden any differently than they treated President Trump."

Incoming House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan wants to know what the documents are before determining whether the committee should investigate further, but he said, "It's always one set of rules for President Trump -- they literally raided his home 91 days before the midterm election -- and a different standard it seems with President Biden. So, we'll go from there."

Nick Arama notes that the U Penn Biden Center takes a lot of money from China, and refuses to be transparent about its funding.

What a shock that a Biden organization is taking secret money from dodgy Chinese agents.

It was quite the bombshell when it dropped on Monday that Joe Biden had classified documents kept in his office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., documents from the time he was vice-president. Unlike a president, he doesn't have the cover of the Presidential Records Act and he didn't have the power to declassify anything. Plus, since the Center was founded in 2018, and he left the vice presidency in Jan. 2017, they had to have been kept someplace else in the meantime even before they got to the Center. So that raises additional questions about when he knew about them.

But you may recall that we've written about the Penn Biden Center in the past. The Center had drawn the attention of a watchdog group because it refused to be transparent about the sources of its funding. Back in 2020, the National Legal and Policy Center filed a complaint to get them to disclose the sources of their funding.

As we reported, "between March 2017 and the end of 2019, the University of Pennsylvania received a total of $61 million in gifts and contracts from China, 21 million of which was in "anonymous gifts."" The University received $15.8 million in anonymous Chinese gifts in the year Biden created the Penn Biden Center, including one eye-popping $14.5 million donation in May 2018, records show.

No one in Biden's Criminal Government is commenting.

That's okay, they don't have to -- their media Palace Guard is commenting for them, making the defenses that they can't (because they're not true).

You know, like a Truth-to-Power adversarial media is supposed to do.

Bonchie comments:

You have to love the logic being applied there. None of these leftwingers (and yeah, Tom Nichols is one at this point) are actually arguing affirmatively that it was legal for Biden to possess the classified documents. Instead, they just go right to drawing arbitrary lines, asserting that it's fine when a Democrat does it but criminal when Trump does it.

Via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit: Just as Hillary Clinton's collusion with foreign governments required the framing of Donald Trump for "Russian Collusion," so too did Joe Biden's years-long misappropriation of classified documents require raids on Donald Trump's home:

posted by Ace at 12:11 PM

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