Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, took to Twitter to voice his concern saying, “either Joe Biden is an absolute hypocrite or completely clueless. Probably both. We need to get to the bottom of this. How long has he had these…6+ years?”
“Time for accountability,” Scott continued.
According to the Associated Press, lawyers for Biden announced on Saturday that five more classified documents were found in the President’s Delaware home on Thursday. Previously, the White House had announced only one document was found.
White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement, “while I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages.”
“The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them,” Sauber continued.
Right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon, a staunch Biden critic, posted on Gettr following the announcement saying, “Biden White House lies every time they speak on this topic…Lock.Him.Up.”
Jason Miller, a former senior adviser to former President Donald Trump tweeted, “MORE?!? Additional Documents Marked as Classified Found at Biden’s Wilmington Residence.”
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also took to Twitter to voice her concerns saying, “what’s the easiest way to cover up Biden family crimes and corruption from Republican investigations? Easy. When R’s take majority, have Biden’s attorneys suddenly turn over classified docs found in multiple locations & have Biden’s AG appoint a special counsel to ‘investigate.’”
This latest disclosure of documents came after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed former U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s mishandling of the classified documents. The investigation will be the first special counsel probe into a sitting Democratic president in roughly two decades.
Meanwhile, the news of classified documents being found in both Biden’s private Delaware home and Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the president’s University of Pennsylvania think tank, has incensed conservatives including the former president.
Before news of the additional documents was announced, Trump posted to Truth Social saying, “what Biden did was wrong, but he was given a reasonable and stable Special Counsel who is sane, inclined not to make waves, friendly with RINOS, and is not known as a flame-throwing lunatic or a Biden hater.”
“What I did was RIGHT, Secured documents in a secured place, lock on the doors, guards and Secret Service all around, security cameras working. Mar-a-Lago is essentially an armed fort, and was built that way in the 1920’s, with High Walls & structure to serve as the Southern W.H,” Trump continued.
The former president is also under investigation by the Department of Justice for keeping hundreds of highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The documents reportedly included classified materials regarding nuclear weapons.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg told Newsweek on Saturday, “Comparing the Trump situation to Biden’s is a false equivalency. If Trump had just returned the documents, as Biden has done, there would be no criminal investigation. But Trump refused to cooperate for several months, leading to a subpoena that was largely ignored, forcing DOJ to obtain a search warrant to retrieve the classified material.”
Aronberg continued: “There needs to be an aggravating factor for DOJ to prosecute the mishandling of classified documents, such as obstruction, or vast quantities, or a willful violation, or storage in such a flimsy way that it risks exposure. These are factors that could apply to the Mar a Lago documents but not the Biden documents. At least not yet.”
Update 1/14/2023, 3:59 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Dave Aronberg.
