President Joe Biden’s stash of classified documents at the Biden Penn Center included materials reportedly marked top secret.
About ten documents were unearthed at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC, on Tuesday by Biden’s personal attorneys. Among those, some were marked top secret, according to CBS News.
Between the classified documents retrieved from the Biden Penn Center and the documents retrieved from Biden’s residence in Delaware on Thursday, the total number of classified Biden stashed is about 20. No top secret documents were reported to be at Biden’s residence.
It is unknown why Biden’s personal attorneys were initially looking for the classified documents.
According to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, there are three levels of classified information:
(a) Top Secret. The authority to classify information originally as Top Secret may be exercised only by:
(1) the President;
(2) agency heads and officials designated by the President in the Federal Register; and
(3) officials delegated this authority pursuant to Section 1.2(d).
(b) Secret. The authority to classify information originally as Secret may be exercised only by:
(1) agency heads and officials designated by the President in the Federal Register;
(2) officials with original Top Secret classification authority; and
(3) officials delegated such authority pursuant to Section 1.2(d).
(c) Confidential. The authority to classify information originally as Confidential may be exercised only by:
(1) agency heads and officials designated by the President in the Federal Register;
(2) officials with original Top Secret or Secret classification authority; and
(3) officials delegated such authority pursuant to Section 1.2(d).
Since the classified documents were unearthed by Biden’s personal attorneys, three investigations have opened three entities: House Oversight committee, House Judiciary Committee, Justice Department’s special counsel.
The probes into Biden’s mishandling of the materials come as Biden administration officials have reportedly begun blaming the National Archives for not properly taking care to protect the classified documents in 2017 when Biden left the White House.
The investigations will seek to uncover the extent of wrongdoing and by whom. Former Department of Justice prosecutor Andrew McCarthy argued Thursday that Biden has already admitted guilt.
At least of the classified documents discovered are related to the Biden family business ventures in Ukraine. In 2017, Hunter Biden was paid $83,000 per month to be on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Hunter was appointed to the board of Burisma in 2014 with no previous experience in the energy sector or in Ukraine.
In 2015, Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion from Ukraine if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.