‘Boxes of documents in Boston’ latest Biden classified reveal
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both classified documents
February 10, 2023 | 5:22 p.m
WASHINGTON — Emails released Friday by the National Archives reveal references to President Biden’s attorneys handing over boxes of documents in Boston — confirming a little-known detail in the chronology of Biden’s classified documents scandal.
“Please ensure that the boxes remain securely in a locked room in your Boston office and that no one can access them,” National Archives official Gary Stern wrote Nov. 7 to attorneys for Biden, Patrick Moore and Bob Bauer .
The email came five days after Biden’s attorneys said they discovered classified documents in Biden’s Post vice presidential office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.
CNN reported in January that Moore had sent some Penn Biden Center documents to his Boston law firm before discovering classified records.
The records brought to Boston were believed to contain no sensitive information, the outlet reported at the time. However, the new emails raise questions about the nature of the documents given the logs requested by the National Archives.
On November 8, Stern wrote to Bauer and Moore: “We would like to pick up the boxes from your office in Boston and take them to the JFK library. Would that be possible tomorrow?”
Moore wrote back, “Yes it would. I’ll still be in DC so I’ll put you through to my colleague [redacted]with whom you may have had dealings in the past on other matters relating to the Kennedy archives.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday afternoon that she knew nothing about the Boston boxes, referring questions to White House Office spokesman Ian Sams, who did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment reacted.
The White House has repeatedly withheld information about the scandal, leading to the appointment last month of Special Counsel Robert Hur to determine whether Biden or anyone close to him broke the law.
The White House hid the initial discovery for more than two months — well after the Nov. 8 midterm elections, which saw former President Donald Trump’s alleged misuse of records following an Aug. 8 FBI raid in his mar-a- Lago was a major vacation spot in Florida.
Biden first publicly admitted the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center at a Jan. 10 news conference in Mexico City — but only after CBS broke the story a day earlier.
In his initial remarks, Biden did not say that a second cache of classified documents was reportedly found by his team in his Wilmington garage on Dec. 20, leaving listeners with the impression that only one record had been found.
Biden acknowledged on Jan. 12 that some classified records were found next to his classic Corvette in Wilmington, but defended his handling of those documents.
“My Corvette is in a locked garage, okay? So it’s not like they’re sitting on the street,” Biden said.
Although the White House said at the time that the search for documents was complete, more documents were found by Biden’s lawyers. An FBI search found six other items with classification marks.
First son Hunter Biden, who is under federal investigation for possible tax fraud, money laundering and illegal foreign lobbying, according to records on his former laptop, frequently visited the Wilmington document repository and even listed the house as his own residence on a pre-2018 check form.
The 80-year-old president, who in September called his predecessor “irresponsible” for keeping secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, has responded harshly to questions about the controversy.
“There isn’t one,” Biden told reporters during a Jan. 19 trip to California.
It is unclear how many documents have been retrieved so far. CNN reported that around 10 classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center, some marked “top secret” and relating to the UK, Ukraine and Iran.
Republicans are calling for more searches, including the roughly 1,850 boxes of Biden’s Senate papers being held at the University of Delaware.