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President Joe Biden has been questioned as part of an investigation into the handling of classified documents found in his former office and home, the White House has confirmed.
Last January, Attorney General Merrick Garland named an independent prosecutor to conduct an investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents while he was vice president.
"The president has been interviewed as part of the investigation being led by Special Counsel Robert Hur," the White House said in a statement.
The "voluntary interview" took place at the White House on Sunday and Monday.
"As we have said from the beginning, the president and the White House are cooperating with this investigation," it added.
The White House said it was also "being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation."
The probe involves documents found in the possession of Biden, who was vice president under Barack Obama when the papers were removed from the White House.
Biden's lawyers reported that they had found several classified documents mixed in with other papers in a storage closet while packing up an office at a Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, where Biden had kept an office between his vice-presidency and his presidency campaign.
More documents were found in the president's Wilmington, Delaware, garage on December 20, 2022, and in his home library on January 12, 2023.
Former President Donald Trump, Biden's likely Republican opponent in the 2024 election, separately faces trial over the alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.
The special counsel in that case, Jack Smith, said Trump allegedly took classified documents to his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida and did not return them.
Trump pleaded not guilty in June to charges of unlawfully retaining national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements.
The prosecutor in that case has asked for a 2024 trial, one of a number Trump faces on various charges that include trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden.
Republicans have been trying to draw parallels between the Trump and Biden document cases.
However, while Biden and his staff have cooperated with the investigation, Trump allegedly refused to cooperate or hand back documents, according to a criminal indictment against him last June.
The federal indictment claims that Trump improperly stored sensitive documents on nuclear capabilities and showed off a Pentagon "plan of attack" and classified map. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The indictment is focused on hundreds of classified documents that Trump took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving office in January 2021. Even as "tens of thousands of members and guests" visited Mar-a-Lago between the end of Trump's presidency and August 2022, when the FBI obtained a search warrant, documents were recklessly stored in spaces including a "ballroom, a bathroom and shower, and office space, his bedroom, and a storage room."
The indictment claims that, for a two-month period between January and March 15, 2021, some of Trump's boxes were stored in one of Mar-a-Lago's ballrooms. A picture included in the indictment shows boxes stacked in rows on the ballroom's stage.
About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more