President Biden on Friday said he’s dealt with his classified documents scandal “fundamentally different” than his predecessor and suggested there’s no comparison to the way he and former President Donald Trump mishandled the sensitive material.
The 80-year-old president made the remarks during an interview with ABC News host David Muir, when reminded of the way he described Trump’s classified document scandal last year during a now infamous interview with “60 Minutes.”
“You called the Trump discovery irresponsible. Is there something irresponsible here though too?” Muir asked Biden, referencing the sensitive material found in boxes stashed in the president’s garage in Wilmington, Del., and in his old office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC.
To which Biden responded: “You know, you’re a good lawyer, but you’re trying to make a comparison.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida on Nov. 15, 2022. AFP via Getty Images
“There’s degrees of irresponsibility, that are, they can be significant degrees of irresponsibility,” Biden argued, only conceding that “not everything was gone through as meticulously as it should have” when boxes were packed up from his vice presidential office at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.
As he has said in previous interviews, Biden noted that he has been advised by his lawyers not to comment on the Justice Department’s investigation. But at the same time he emphasized that there have been “very few documents that have been confiscated, found in my possession.”
“All the stuff that was moved out of my Senate office over the years, I’m told there were a couple things that were from 1973 or 74 – documents that were marked classified.”
Classified documents were found in a garage at Biden’s Wilmington home. Joe Biden
“I don’t know of anything, you know maybe, I don’t know of anything that was marked like it was, you know, top secret, highly classified, etc,” Biden claimed.
The president also attempted to distinguish his scandal from Trump’s by noting his cooperation with authorities.
“The difference is every single solitary thing I’ve been asked to do, I’ve done voluntarily. I’ve invited the Justice Department to come into every aspect of any place that I had any control of. There’s no need for search warrants,” Biden said.
“Wherever you want to go, you can go … that was totally different,” he added.
Documents seized by the FBI from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last year.AP
“There was no intention. I opened up my home, all my homes” to the FBI, Biden continued, calling his response to finding improperly stored classified material “fundamentally different” from Trump’s.
“There’s nothing for me to hide,” the president claimed.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/02/25/biden-says-he-handled-doc-scandal-different-than-trump/