U.S. President Joe Biden said predecessor Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents was “totally irresponsible,” but that he is staying out of the ongoing investigation.
The Department of Justice is investigating Trump for removing White House records because it believed he illegally held documents including some of America’s most closely held secrets. Some topics involved in the cases involve intelligence-gathering and clandestine human sources.
Seeing the classified documents turned up by an Aug. 8 FBI search of Trump’s Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago caused Biden to wonder “how anyone can be that irresponsible,” he said.
“I thought, what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods? And by that, I mean, names of people who help etc., and it’s just totally irresponsible,” Biden said.
Biden made the remarks in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” program. The remarks broke with the president’s pattern of typically avoiding commenting on the Department of Justice’s ongoing criminal probe into his predecessor and onetime competitor for the White House.
Biden said he had not received a classified briefing on the contents of those documents.
“I have not asked for the specifics of those documents because I don’t want to get myself in the middle of whether or not the Justice Department should move or not move on certain actions they can take,” Biden said. “I agreed I would not tell them what to do and not, in fact, engage in telling them how to prosecute or not.”
The department released a heavily redacted affidavit that underpinned the raid conducted on Aug. 8 at Trump’s beloved Florida estate Mar-a-Lago. At the search, federal agents seized 11 sets of classified records including some labeled “top secret” as documents that could gravely threaten national security if exposed.
In the affidavit, an unidentified FBI agent said the agency reviewed and identified 184 documents “bearing classification markings” containing “national defense information” after Trump in January returned 15 boxes of government records sought by the U.S. National Archives.
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