US President Joe Biden’s aides they discovered a new batch of second-ranked government documents, a growing political embarrassment for the White House. This was commented on by the BBC.
The first cache was discovered in a private office in Washington that Biden used after his vice presidency.
The matter is being investigated by the US Department of Justice.
It was still unclear Wednesday when or where the additional tranche of files had been found by Biden’s aides.
The initial batch of approx 10 documents were discovered in November last year at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank near the White House, but it only came to light this week.
These documents reportedly include US intelligence memos and intelligence material relating to Ukraine, Iran and the UK.
The White House has not yet commented on the newly discovered lot. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer questions about the first file cache during her daily press briefing.
“It’s been reviewed by the Justice Department,” he said. “I will not do that go beyond that the president shared yesterday.”
See you Tuesday Biden said he was “surprised” by the discovery of the files and was “cooperating” with the Justice Department during the inspection.
The dispute comes as the Democratic president faces scrutiny of the new Republican majority in the US House of Representatives.
“Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” James Comer, the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Wednesday.
The commission launched investigations into the president and his family, including a request to the White House deliver documents and communicationsrelated to classified files.
The law requires that all White House documents, including confidential ones, be turned over to the US National Archives after the administration’s term ends.
In August last year, FBI agents searched the home of Biden’s predecessor in Florida and seized more than 10,000 files, that Trump had not turned over to the National Archives.
The Justice Department had issued a subpoena for the classified files before the FBI showed up at Mar-a-Lago.
Federal agents seized more than 300 classified documents from the Palm Beach golf club, including 18 marked “top secret”.
Donald Trump is already facing a criminal investigation for alleged mishandling of confidential files.
The White House said Biden’s lawyers alerted the National Archives as soon as they discovered classified materials at the think tank and the agency collected the material the next morning.
