The National Archives on Friday released 74 pages of emails showing an Archives lawyer coordinating with President Joe Biden’s attorneys to secretly retrieve classified materials from the Penn Biden Center before the 2022 midterm elections.
According to House oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY), the Archives was previously instructed by either the White House or the Department of Justice (DOJ) to hide initial revelations of the Biden classified document scandal from the American people.
In addition, the establishment media reported at least three times that Biden and the DOJ agreed to hide the scandal from public view with likely no plans to disclose it until the scandal was leaked to CBS News on January 9, weeks after the initial trove was found by Biden’s personal lawyers November 2.
The emails released Friday due to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Bloomberg, show the Archives secretly coordinating with and accommodating Biden’s personal attorneys to retrieve classified records. The emails also show questions were raised about whether classified materials were also stored in Boston and Philadelphia.
The initial reason or cause for the search at the Penn Biden Center by Biden’s attorneys remains unknown.
The emails indicate Biden’s personal attorneys and Archives lawyer Gary Stern had a “conversation” as early as November 4 about the classified scandal.
On November 7, one day before the midterm elections, Stern emailed Biden’s personal lawyers Bob Bauer and Pat Moore to arrange a time to secretly collect materials in a “US Gov van” from the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC.
“Bob/Pat, following our conversation on Friday, we would like to make arrangements for our staff to come back to the DC PennBiden Center space to assess the remaining boxes and take custody of whichever ones we deem appropriate for further review,” Stern wrote Bauer and Moore.
A second email from November 7 shows more accommodation from the Archives. Stern asked Biden’s lawyers if personnel from the Archives could return to the Penn Biden Center “to assess the remaining boxes and take custody of whichever ones we deem appropriate for further review.”
Bauer said the Archives could return and pick up more documents the next day, and noted that he was “also currently checking to determine whether there are any similar materials in the Pennsylvania Penn-Biden space, and we will report back to you today.”
Stern also told Moore to ensure the boxes of materials were kept in a secure location. “Please ensure that the boxes in your office in Boston remain secure in a locked space and are not accessed by anyone,” he said in relation to the Boston location.
The emails come after the Archives failed to provide information about the document scandal to Comer before the January 24 deadline. Comer called the missed deadline “very disappointing.”
Comer has also said the Archives was previously instructed by either the White House or the DOJ to hide initial revelations of the Biden classified document scandal from the American people.
“There are only two people that could have given those orders, and that’s either the Department of Justice with [Attorney General] Merrick Garland or the White House with Joe Biden,” Comer told Fox News.
“I don’t think we would know about these documents had it not been for investigative reporting, so we want to know why the administration wasn’t transparent sooner,” Comer said.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
