Classified documents found at Penn Biden Center in Washington are under DOJ review

Former-President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden at a rally for Pennsylvania Democratic midterm candidates in November. The Justice Department is reviewing classified documents found by Biden’s personal attorneys, materials that were turned over to the National Archives the day after they were discovered. Mark Makela/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Mark Makela/Getty Images

Former-President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden at a rally for Pennsylvania Democratic midterm candidates in November. The Justice Department is reviewing classified documents found by Biden’s personal attorneys, materials that were turned over to the National Archives the day after they were discovered.

Mark Makela/Getty Images

President Biden’s personal attorneys have discovered classified documents among what appear to be Obama-era records when the current president was vice president, according to a statement from Richard Sauber, the special counsel to the president, said.

Biden’s attorneys found the documents while packing other materials in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., before the midterm elections and the National Archives were notified the same day, CBS first reported. The Archives collected the documents the following morning and the matter is under review by the Justice Department.

Sauber said in a statement that the documents “were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives” and that Biden’s attorneys have been cooperating with the DOJ and National Archives to ensure all Obama-Biden administration records are “appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”

Sauber said Biden periodically used the office space at the center from mid-2017 until the beginning of his 2020 campaign.

A source familiar with the inquiry told NPR’s Carrie Johnson that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had tasked Trump-era U.S. Attorney John Lausch Jr. in Chicago with reviewing the matter.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

News of the documents and DOJ review come as former DOJ integrity chief Jack Smith is investigating the potential mishandling of classified documents by former President Donald Trump, which were seized from his Florida home last August. Smith is also looking into aspects of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.