Biden faces scrutiny over classified documents

US President Joe Biden is drawing criticism from Republicans after 10 classified documents were found last November in his former office at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington, prompting an investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ said Tuesday it was reviewing the sensitive documents found by Biden's lawyers last year after the White House said that they did not know what was in them. Information on the discovery last year only came to light Monday in a report by CBS News.

The White House Counsel's Office on Tuesday did not answer questions on why it took two months to disclose that the documents had been found.

Biden also avoided reporters' questions while he met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the North American Leaders' Summit.

Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House Counsel's Office, said in a statement: "This is an ongoing process under review [by the Department of Justice], so we are going to be limited in what we can say at this time. But we are committed to doing this the right way, and we will provide further details when and as appropriate."

Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement: "A small number of documents with classified markings" were found by Biden's lawyers in a "locked closet" on Nov 2, while they were clearing out his office at Penn Biden Center.

Sauber said that following the discovery of the documents, Biden's attorneys immediately alerted the White House Counsel's Office, which contacted the National Archives and Records Administration. The archives administration picked up the documents the next day.

Sauber added: "Since that discovery, the president's personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives."

The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, which has headquarters at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was founded following Biden's two terms as vice-president in the administration of former president Barack Obama.

The center officially opened in February 2018, but had a "soft" opening in March 2017, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian, an independent student newspaper at the university.

Biden would occasionally use an office at the center in Washington from 2017 until 2019, when he launched his 2020 presidential campaign.

News of the discovery of the documents prompted a response by former president Donald Trump and his Republican allies, after Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was raided by the FBI last year in a search for classified documents taken during his four years in office.

Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: "When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified."

Dozens of documents marked classified were found at Trump's palatial Florida estate in August. The FBI carried out a raid after attempts to recover them were rebuffed.

In May 2021, the National Archives contacted Trump's team about the documents that were in his possession, saying they needed to be returned because they are government property.

By January 2022, Trump's team gave some of the documents to the National Archives but the archives discovered that the returned material included classified and other material. It asked the Justice Department to launch a probe into alleged mishandling of classified documents.

In August, the FBI retrieved dozens more documents in rooms at Mar-a-Lago. Altogether, Trump had 300 documents in 33 boxes, the FBI said.

In a September interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, Biden called Trump's possession of the documents "irresponsible".

That Biden also may have mishandled classified documents comes as the Justice Department decides whether or not to bring charges against Trump, who announced he will run for president in 2024.

Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the new GOP chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked reporters: "Is the White House going to be raided tonight? Are they going to raid the Bidens?

"This is further concern that there's a two-tier justice system within the DOJ with how they treat Republicans versus Democrats, certainly how they treat the former president versus the current president."

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for a briefing.

Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, told reporters Monday: "They knew about this a week before the election, maybe the American people should have known that. They certainly knew about the raid on Mar-a-Lago 91 days before this election, but nice if on November 2, the country would have known that there were classified documents at the Biden Center."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.