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Former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump fumed on Monday evening after a CBS News report said that potentially classified documents were discovered at a Washington DC think tank by President Joe Biden’s personal attorneys.
The documents in question came from Mr Biden’s vice presidential office. Mr Biden had an office at the think tank from 2017 to 2020 between his stints in government service. Mr Trump, who is under criminal investigation for his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House two years ago, was none-too-pleased.
“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Mr Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social.
Mr Trump did not offer any evidence to back his claim that the documents were “definitely not declassified.”
Though the potential mishandling of classified is a parallel between this and Mr Trump’s own situation, there are a number of difference between the two cases.
One significant difference is that Mr Biden’s personal attorneys reported the presence of the potentially classified documents at the think tank to the National Archives and Records Administration, which then took possession of the documents and informed the Justice Department of the situation.
After that, Attorney General Merrick Garland asked the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch — a Trump appointee — to investigate the matter and issue a report on it.
It is not currently known how the potentially classified documents came to be at the think tank, or whether Mr Biden himself was in any way involved in moving them there.
But Mr Trump, never shy, took the opportunity to lash out at law enforcement for not raiding Mr Biden’s homes or the White House itself despite no reporting of suspicion that Mr Biden is improperly holding other classified documents at any of those locations.
Mr Trump is running for president again, having launched his campaign at Mar-a-Lago shortly after the midterm election in November, but has thus far held few major public events and made few significant campaign moves. He does, however, continue to post prolifically on Truth Social.
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