Officials at the National Archives and Records Administration arranged a speedy and quiet retrieval of nine boxes in Boston last year in connection with President Joe Biden’s classified documents case, according to new emails.
NARA made public the existence of the boxes in Boston in a letter to Congress in March, but the emails provide unreported context surrounding NARA’s plan to secure them.
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The emails, published this week under the Freedom of Information Act, provide a fuller picture of NARA’s approach after it learned in November 2022 of the additional location of the records that had been in Biden’s possession.
The emails show a top NARA official contacting his colleague on the night of the 2022 midterm elections with an email subject line reading “Urgent Matter.”
“On Wednesday, I will be asking you to send two staff to retrieve and then secure some materials from a law firm. This needs to be done with the utmost professionalism and discretion,” the official wrote in reference to the Boston law firm office of Pat Moore, who was helping manage Biden’s documents at the time.
A letter from NARA’s Debra Wall to Congress in March revealed that NARA had obtained the nine boxes from Moore’s office on Nov. 9, 2022, and moved them to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, also in Boston.
Wall wrote that Biden’s lawyers alerted NARA on Nov. 3, 2022, that Moore had moved the boxes from the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., to his Boston office. Wall said the Department of Justice instructed NARA to pick the boxes up and move them to the JFK Library, which was the nearest secure facility.
The new batch of emails chronicles an administration moving quickly and quietly to retrieve some of Biden’s records at the Penn Biden Center think tank and the law office in Boston. The White House would later confirm that documents with classified markings were found at the Penn Biden Center. The nature of the documents at the Boston office remains unconfirmed.
“It is likely we will need to pick up [redacted] boxes on Monday. More as this evolves,” one NARA official wrote to another on Nov. 4, 2022.
“Change of plans. We are now intending to take temporary physical custody of all materials,” a NARA official wrote on Nov. 7, 2022.
“9 bxs picked up in Boston and being secured at JFK,” a NARA official wrote on Nov. 9, 2022.
Other emails in the batch had previously been made public and showed lawyers for Biden readily accommodating NARA’s requests and arranging the pickup of documents.
The correspondence all occurred under the public’s radar.
Not until after CBS reported on Jan. 9, 2023, that Biden possessed documents with classified markings did the White House confirm the revelation to the public. Lawmakers, and Republicans in particular, have raised concerns about Biden’s transparency on the matter, especially because he chose to keep mum on the issue days before the 2022 midterm elections.
The revelations about the documents and the transparency questions surrounding them led to a DOJ special counsel investigation, led by Robert Hur, into whether Biden mishandled the information.
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While the status of Hur’s inquiry is unknown, the White House confirmed last month that the special counsel interviewed Biden as part of the case, signaling Hur may be making progress in it.
Hur will be required to submit a report about his investigation once it has concluded.
