The American president is embarrassed by the discovery, at his home in particular, of classified files dating from the time of his vice-president. “Documents arranged in the wrong place”, he defended Thursday.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
For Joe Biden, it is a question of bringing the soufflé back, after the embarrassing discovery, in his family house and in a circle of reflection, confidential documents dating from the time of his vice-president
“Listen, we found some documents (…) which were stored in the wrong place, we immediately put them back to the archives and to the Ministry of Justice,” said the American president, Thursday, January 19, during a Movement in California to journalists who questioned him on this subject.
“I think you will see that it is wind. I have no regrets. I apply what the lawyers told me that they want me to do. This is exactly what We do, “he continued, adding that he was cooperating” entirely “with justice.
This is a delicate affair for the Democratic President who plans to represent himself in 2024, and for the Democrats as a whole. The latter did not hesitate to criticize former republican president Donald Trump, targeted by a judicial inquiry for having kept whole cards of documents when he left Washington in 2021.
a communication denounced by republicans
With regard to Joe Biden, first classified documents had been discovered on November 2 at the Penn Biden Center, a Washington reflection circle where he once had an office, and reported in the National Archives. In December, the president’s lawyers then found, in the garage of his house in Wilmington, in Delaware, “a small number of documents” potentially confidential, and warned the Ministry of Justice. And in January, these lawyers uncovered a confidential document, this time in the room adjacent to the garage of the house. The next day, the lawyer for the presidency discovered five additional pages there.
To silence the suspicions of “two weights, two measures”, the Ministry of Justice entrusted the investigations on Joe Biden’s files to an independent special prosecutor, as he did for Donald Trump.
The republican opposition has denounced communication on the drop by the executive. Taking advantage of its – slight – majority in the House of Representatives, she launched a parliamentary investigation and claimed more information.
A law of 1978 obliges American presidents and vice-presidents to transmit, at the end of their mandate, all of their emails, letters and other working documents in the National Archives.