In Thursday’s hastily scheduled mini-press conference after a damning report about his handling of classified documents, President Biden made several claims that were false — so false that even CNN had to whip up a story about it.
In the session, Mr. Biden sought to clarify the circumstances surrounding his handling of classified documents found in his private residence and a personal office. But he dismissed several findings in the report by special counsel Robert Hur that are, in fact, true.
Mr. Biden emphasized the differences between the handling of his classified documents versus those of former President Donald Trump, indicating that his documents were better secured in lockable filing cabinets.
However, this claim has been declared inaccurate. The special counsel’s report noted that, while some documents were indeed found in locked cabinets at Mr. Biden’s Delaware residence, others were discovered in an unsecured and damaged box in the garage. The box reportedly contained a mix of commonplace items and classified information, the latter including documents about Afghanistan.
Mr. Hur wrote that Mr. Biden “should have known” that as a private citizen in 2017, “he was not permitted to keep handwritten notes about the President’s Daily Brief and other classified information in unlocked drawers in his home.”
Moreover, the investigation could not conclusively determine if the classified documents from the garage were previously stored in more secure settings. The report emphasizes that other classified material was found in unlocked areas of Mr. Biden’s home, including handwritten vice-presidential notes stored in unsecured drawers.
Mr. Biden also claimed, falsely, that none of the classified documents in his possession were highly classified, specifically denying the presence of material with “red stuff” around the corners, a colloquial reference to specific classification markings.
Despite the president’s claim, the report from the special counsel highlighted that various documents and handwritten notes Mr. Biden retained bore markings for “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,” one of the highest levels of classification, which could lead to “exceptionally grave damage to national security” upon unauthorized disclosure.
Documents found included a 2009 memo from the National Security Adviser to President Obama marked “TOP SECRET/SCI,” as well as another memo with the notation “TOP SECRET WITH TOP SECRET/NOFORN/CODEWORD ATTACHMENTS,” indicating a high degree of classification due to the sensitivity of the information related to intelligence sources and methods.
Mr. Hur wrote that when investigators examined 37 excerpts from Mr. Biden’s handwritten materials, they found that “eight are Top Secret with Sensitive Compartmented Information, seven of which include information concerning human intelligence sources,” while six were Top Secret alone, 21 Secret and two Confidential, CNN reported.
“Mr. Biden wrote down obviously sensitive information discussed during intelligence briefings with then President Obama and meetings in the White House Situation Room about matters of national security and military and foreign policy,” Mr. Hur wrote.
In his report, Mr. Hur revealed that Mr. Biden mistakenly shared classified information from his personal notebooks with a ghostwriter. This ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, was collaborating with Mr. Biden on his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” Contrary to this assertion, Mr. Biden had promised that he did not disclose any classified material to Mr. Zwonitzer.
According to the report, this denial from Mr. Biden is inaccurate. Mr. Hur detailed in his findings that Mr. Biden did in fact share classified information with Mr. Zwonitzer, and this occurred when Mr. Biden read “nearly verbatim” from his notebooks, including detailed notes from meetings in the highly secure White House Situation Room, on multiple occasions.
One notable instance cited in the report includes a recorded 2017 conversation at Mr. Biden’s private residence, where he read aloud his notes from a 2015 National Security Council meeting about Iraq. Subsequently, he briefed the ghostwriter on a 2009 memo that Mr. Biden had penned to then-President Obama, which opposed additional troop deployments to Afghanistan, followed by an off-hand remark from Mr. Biden about discovering “all the classified stuff downstairs.”
More than half a decade later, documents related to the troop surge in Afghanistan were found among Mr. Biden’s personal papers stored in a Delaware garage.
Mr. Hur wrote emphatically: “Mr. Biden shared information, including some classified information, from those notebooks with his ghostwriter.”
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