🎧 Listen: In today's episode of The Journal podcast, AnnieLinskey details the FBI's discovery of classified documents at President Biden's Delaware home on Friday, and what it could mean for his presidency
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Kate Linebaugh: For the last two weeks, information has been dripping out about President Biden's mishandling of classified documents.
On Friday, the FBI got involved. A team of federal investigators went to Biden's Delaware home to search for more documents. Annie Linskey: The search went on for over 12 hours, and additional documents with classified markings were found during that search and they were taken by federal agents.Annie Linskey: Yeah, it was a very extensive search. It went through all of the rooms in the home, private areas, went through boxes and multiple documents, including even handwritten notes that the president has received and written. Kate Linebaugh: That's our colleague, Annie Linskey. She says this latest search is a big deal because the FBI is involved. Annie Linskey: The previous searches were done by Mr. Biden's lawyers, so people who work for him, but these are officials who are going top to bottom through, at least in their telling, every nook and cranny of the house. There's a real difference there. It's sort of like if you're looking for something versus if the police are looking for something. Kate Linebaugh: The FBI search came after Biden's team told the Justice Department last week that there were classified documents in his home, and Biden has previously said that he's confident they won't turn up much. President Biden: 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. Kate Linebaugh: But Annie says that the discovery of these documents could become a big problem for Biden. Annie Linskey: These findings are not consistent with the brand that Mr. Biden is trying to project to the country. The president has said he's bringing back a level of calmness and competence to the White House, something that he and his supporters say was lacking in the previous administration, and to find that there are multiple instances where at the best he was sloppy with classified information is problematic to that brand. Kate Linebaugh: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Monday, January 23rd. Coming up on the show, more classified documents discovered at Biden's home and what that could mean for his presidency. Let's go back to the start of the year. What was that moment like for Biden? Annie Linskey: The president was doing extremely well. He walked into 2023. He was in a very good mood. He was very chatty with the reporters. His party defied expectations in the midterm elections. They had been expected to have a drubbing. There was supposed to be a red wave, and instead Democrats held onto the Senate and only lost a handful of seats in the House of Representatives. Then the president started his year with a big event in Kentucky with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell showcasing this idea that he has long talked about that he can get along with Republicans. He can get things done. So, he started the year on this high. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives was in disarray voting time after time after time just to elect a speaker. So, the year really started with this contrast of a White House that was moving forward with quite a lot of momentum while the opposition party was really struggling, and that over the last 15 days or so has really flipped. Kate Linebaugh: The mood started to flip when Biden was on a state visit to Mexico meeting with North American leaders. Speaker 5: Classified documents from President Biden's time as vice president have been found at an office he no longer uses. Speaker 6: White House lawyers say the documents are currently being reviewed by the Justice Department and the National Archives. Speaker 7: Now these materials were discovered by the president's personal lawyers shortly before last year's midterm elections. Annie Linskey: The White House confirmed those reports, and then the president at a news conference with two other foreign leaders walked out in front of reporters and essentially read a statement where he acknowledged that these had been found. He also said that he handles classified information carefully. President Biden: I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office. Annie Linskey: It's always surprising to hear the President of the United States make an admission of this type to acknowledge that documents have been found. It seemed as though he was trying to get ahead of a story and trying to assure the American people on really the biggest possible stage that he was taking this matter extremely seriously. Kate Linebaugh: But there was more to the story than Biden included in his statement. Very soon information about more documents in more locations started coming to light. Annie Linskey: In the following days, reports surfaced that additional documents had been found in the president's garage in December, and that's where the story began to expand, and that's where additional searches began to happen with some degree of frequency.Annie Linskey: At this point, we know that there have been five times in which an official has gone looking for documents and has found some with classified markings. I will say the first of those five was an accident. As far as we know, was attorneys packing up an office that he was no longer going to be using. That's where the first tranche of documents were found, but in four additional instances, there was a specific decision to look for classified documents, and more were found. Kate Linebaugh: How did the discovery of all these other documents change your understanding of the story? Annie Linskey: I think the subsequent discoveries have made me wonder why the initial discovery did not trigger faster and more thorough work on the part of the White House and the president's personal lawyers. You would've expected that there would be a very thorough look everywhere else to try to work as quickly and as thoroughly through his homes and locations where there could be classified documents. The idea is if you have classified documents in one place, it's possible they could be in other places as well. It seems as though those searches were not done immediately. I think that has been one of the major questions I've had about how this has unfolded.Annie Linskey: We know very little about what's in them. We know that they were classified, but there isn't a sense of whether or not the documents reveal sources and methods, or what exactly they are about.Annie Linskey: Or the nuclear codes, which we hope the nuclear codes change with some frequency, but I think that there's a sense that people like to know the quantity of documents. If it's 50 boxes of documents, or one document, that 50 boxes could be worse than one, but I think that is a little bit tricky. You could have 50 documents and none of them are really all that secret, or one document that's the mother lode of secrecy. Kate Linebaugh: But Biden isn't the only one being investigated for mishandling classified information. Coming up, how this search compares to the investigation of former President Donald Trump. How similar or different is this to what happened to Trump last year? Annie Linskey: That's a really good question. In some ways, there are some pretty clear similarities. You have a president and a former president, both of whom have been found with classified documents where they really shouldn't be. There appear to be differences in process in how President Biden has handled an investigation versus how former President Trump did. It took a lengthy back and forth with former President Trump and the legal team to get to the level of cooperation where federal authorities were able to take possession of those documents that he had. Whereas so far, President Biden has been far more forthcoming with the FBI, has invited them to look through the home rather than requiring a search warrant. So, that is a matter of process, and it's not an insignificant one. It's one that Democrats really point to, but you also have Democrats and Republicans both saying, look, it's problematic that Trump had documents, and it's problematic that Biden had documents. Speaker 8: We simply want to know the same things we asked when Mar-a-Lago was raided. Who has which documents? What level of classification are we talking about here? How many documents? Speaker 9: Contrast that with Joe Biden. Embarrassed by the situation, as he should have been, he invited the government agencies in to carefully look through all the boxes he had accumulated. It's a much different approach. Kate Linebaugh: Do you think a lot of presidents or congressional leaders have classified documents hanging around? Annie Linskey: We've been looking into and certainly asking that question of a ray of former leaders and of current leaders. The bipartisan response is that you know when you're handling a classified document that there are strict procedures around it. These documents are stamped with classified markings. So, it's not like you just happen to have to know that, oh, this piece of paper is classified and this one isn't. There's an actual marking on the paper that says, hey, this is classified. So, former members of Congress and current members of Congress are saying, "Look, when we handle classified materials, we are darn sure that they're classified. There's not a lot of gray area." I know that I don't have any classified documents in my house, for example. Kate Linebaugh: Right. I'm pretty sure I don't. A hundred percent sure, actually. So what happens from here? Annie Linskey: From here, there's going to be a series of investigations. There are two tracks really. There's the legal process, which is really just beginning. Kate Linebaugh: The legal process will be overseen by a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland almost two weeks ago. Annie Linskey: The special counsel has not technically started his work yet, and as he does start, one would imagine he will begin interviewing people who were involved with moving these documents from the vice president's office in the White House complex and in government complexes to private storage areas. That will be the legal process. Subsequently, there's going to be a congressional investigations, and there'll be multiple congressional investigations into a number of different areas. You already have the government oversight committee and several others who have been sending out sheafs of letters to various entities and individuals asking questions about the spaces where these documents were found and who might have had access to them.Annie Linskey: It means that there is a investigator with subpoena power who is going to be poking into this particular set of events surrounding mishandled information, but if that investigator finds something else he wants to start pulling a thread on, he does have the ability to do that. So, it's certainly a political threat to any president. We've seen this in the past where special counsel's investigations about one thing, the Clinton's, for example, with Whitewater went to be something very different. That is a political danger to the White House, and it is a reason why White Houses tend not to want to have these special counsels. Kate Linebaugh: How long will the special counsel investigation take, and these congressional inquiries? Annie Linskey: The special counsel's investigation could take months, and the congressional inquiries could take years. Kate Linebaugh: The White House has said it will fully cooperate with the special counsel's investigation. It feels like this started out as something potentially explainable, and has now spiraled into something bigger and more out of control. Annie Linskey: Right. This started out as one set of documents that had been found in November in an office, and then as the public learned more and more about this investigation, the level of thoroughness in which places have been searched has really increased. Now this subsequent searches, even re-searches of the same place continue to turn up more and more documents. So, the sense now is that this is an ongoing story.Annie Linskey: Mr. Biden has made a big point out of saying that he takes classified information seriously, as he should as the leader of the country, and the fact that you have documents that have been found in an improper place is problematic for him. Biden is considering whether or not he's going to seek a second term in office, and all indications have been including from what he said that he does, as his word, intend to seek reelection. But he will be seeking reelection amid a special counsel investigation, so it certainly casts a shadow over this period of time in which he would be gearing up, and potentially will be gearing up for a reelection. It's going to be another, as some of his allies have put it, distraction, and I think that that's the best case scenario for them. Kate Linebaugh: That's all for today, Monday, January 23rd. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
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