Enlarge image
US President Joe Biden
Photo: Andrew Harnik / dpa
In the affair about the storage of secret government documents in private rooms, US President Joe Biden's team has admitted a mistake.
After the Justice Department appointed a special counsel in the case Thursday, Biden's adviser Richard Sauber said, "We are confident that a thorough review will determine that these documents were inadvertently misplaced and that the President and his attorneys, upon discovering this error acted immediately.«
In the past few days it has become known that classified information from Biden's time as Vice President had been discovered in various places weeks ago.
These include private offices in the capital, Washington, and the garage in Biden's private home in Wilmington, Delaware.
With regard to the appointment of the special counsel, Biden's spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said that the White House had not been informed in advance, but only found out about it at the press conference from department head Merrick Garland.
The ministry works independently.
Jean-Pierre consistently avoided inquiries from reporters about the case - for example, why the White House only informed the public about the discoveries several weeks later, and also bit by bit after the media had reported about it.
Jean-Pierre did not respond, but insisted that Biden's team's approach to the case was transparent and exemplary, and that the President took the handling of classified information very seriously.
All of this is politically very sensitive for Biden, because his Republican predecessor Donald Trump caused a scandal in the summer with a similar case.
After leaving the White House, Trump kept government documents on a grand scale in his private estate Mar-a-Lago in Florida, including a number of top-secret documents.
The Federal Police FBI had searched the property in August and confiscated various classified documents.
Biden had criticized Trump's handling of the documents.
kev/dpa
