Amid the unearthing of classified files from President Joe Biden’s former private office and one of his Delaware homes, his former aides have reportedly said they were hurried into packaging at the end of his tenure as vice president in 2017.
Even as Biden was busy winding up his policy portfolios, his office was shutting down, forcing his aides to scramble to pack his workspaces in the West Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the Naval Observatory, which is the official residence of the vice president, CNN reported.
The mandate to shut down quickly led to a “muddled and hurried” process and aides were left to pack boxes of documents and papers well into the night, the report said. The manner in which the Biden office wound down the vice presidential office was based on interviews with former and current administration officials and others familiar with the process, CNN said.
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The efforts to follow the law while transitioning were reportedly made difficult by an unusually active final stretch.
“That made the process very disjointed – not because people weren’t capable, but because it wasn’t some straight line out of the White House,” the report said, citing people with knowledge of the process.
“The day-to-day almost accelerated in those final days. Throughout, people were trying to ensure he still had what he needed, while also trying to pack in moments he wasn’t there.”
CNN reports that a source described the period as a “really really weird time for everyone.”
The revelation comes against the backdrop of a lack of clarity on how a “small batch of classified documents” ended up in boxes of Biden’s personal materials and who was responsible for the packing and moving.
A special counsel investigation is now underway into how Biden handled the classified material after he left the White House in 2017.
The development assumes importance because it could give former President Donald Trump’s supporters ammunition to hit back at Biden. Trump is being investigated for taking classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida after his presidential tenure.
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Photo: Courtesy of Shutterstock and Gage Skidmore on flickr.
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