President Biden and his Department of Justice have been caught working together to cover up the discovery of classified documents for 68 days, keeping the bombshell from the public, according to a recent report.
The New York Times and the Washington Post, citing anonymous sources familiar with internal White House deliberations, reported that President Biden and a handful of his advisors believed they could convince officials at the Department of Justice that the incident was nothing more than a minor, good-faith mistake. The report published Friday said the Biden team's goal "was to win the trust of Justice Department investigators and demonstrate that the president and his team were cooperating fully" without ever telling the public.
They hoped the matter "could be quietly disposed of without broader implications for Mr. Biden or his presidency".
The initial discussions about how to deal with the matter last November were confined to a "tight circle" of White House advisers: the husband-and-wife pair of Bob Bauer, the President's top personal lawyer, and Anita Dunn, a White House senior adviser; Stuart F. Delery, the White House counsel; and Richard Sauber, a White House lawyer overseeing the response to investigations, according to the report.
Despite their furor over the Trump documents, the Biden advisers believed (or were willing to convince others that they believed) that the discovery of Biden's classified documents from his time as Vice President was essentially no big deal.
"They reasoned that the discovery of documents long after leaving office was not that unusual and, as long as there was no intent to violate rules on classified papers, was generally handled without conflict, so the only thing that would create legal exposure would be drawing public attention to it," NYT reported.
Meanwhile, Biden angrily deflected reporters' questions Thursday about his mishandling of the documents, which were found at his office in Washington and at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
"We are fully cooperating, looking forward to getting this resolved quickly," the President said. "I think you're going to find there's nothing there. I have no regrets. I'm following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It's exactly what we're doing. There's no ‘there' there."
It is clear now that the Biden team attempted to cover up the discovery of these classified documents — after they had slammed Trump for his own classified document affair — and that their goal was to keep the public in the dark.
