US President Joe Biden said he was surprised when informed that government records were found by his attorneys at his former office space in Washington.
He was asked about the issue after the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee requested that the US intelligence community conduct a "damage assessment" of potentially classified documents.
Biden said his attorneys "did what they should have done" when they immediately called the National Archives about the discovery at the offices of the Penn Biden Center.
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He kept an office there after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his Democratic presidential campaign in 2019.
The White House confirmed that the Department of Justice was reviewing "a small number of documents with classified markings" found at the office.
"I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there are any government records that were taken there to that office," Biden said.
He added that "I don't know what's in the documents" and that his lawyers had suggested he not ask.
It has been claimed Biden's retention of the documents put him in "potential violation of laws protecting national security, including the Espionage Act and Presidential Records Act."
The revelation that Biden potentially mishandled classified or presidential records could prove to be a political headache for the president, who called former President Donald Trump's decision to keep hundreds of such records at his private club in Florida "irresponsible."
There are significant differences between the Trump and Biden situations, including the gravity of an ongoing grand jury investigation into the Mar-a-Lago matter.
Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said on Monday that after Biden's attorneys found the records, they notified the National Archives and Records Administration - which took custody of the documents the next day.
"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," Sauber said.
The revelation also may complicate the Justice Department's consideration of whether to bring charges against Trump, a Republican who is trying to win back the White House in 2024 and has repeatedly claimed the department's inquiry into of his own conduct amounted to "corruption."
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