Security experts are arguing that President Biden’s handling of classified materials may have been more susceptible to leaks and theft than those found in Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump, last year.
Charles Marino, the CEO of Sentinel Security and a former adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, specializing in law enforcement, said that Biden’s handling of the documents when compared to Trump’s could have resulted in greater potential for “leakage.”
“The storage of classified documents was not authorized at any of these locations, however there are several distinctions with respect to the potential ‘leakage’ of the information contained within the documents via controls that would have likely prevented or limited unauthorized access to the locations,” Marino said.
Noting that Trump “had the power to declassify whereas Joe Biden as vice president did not,” Marino added that Trump’s Secret Service protection granted the documents themselves more security and suggested that Trump’s additional Secret Service protection granted the documents slightly more protection.
“Former Presidents continue to receive Secret Service protection and deploy security technologies, whereas former Vice Presidents do not, beyond an initial six-month extension. This means there was no US government provided security at the residence in Wilmington, Delaware, or at the Biden-UPenn think tank office in Washington, D.C. for close to six years,” he said.
“Former Presidents are eligible to continue to receive both secure communications and facilities,” he continued. “For example, former Presidents are eligible to request continuation of receiving the classified presidential daily briefings. Former Vice Presidents are not.”
Marino, a former Secret Service special agent, also expressed concern at Biden’s claim that he was unaware of possessing classified materials, stating that it brings into question how closely the documents were protected.
“Not knowing that one is in possession of classified documents, as Biden has claimed, means that there were absolutely no additional measures to safeguard and protect the information,” he said. “Former President Trump acknowledged such possession, took steps to secure them in one location (although still not in accordance with storage requirements for classified info), and is still granted additional security resources for deterrence and detection.”
The Justice Department has been aware of the documents for several months, after a stash of classified documents was found inside the Washington, D.C., offices of the Penn Biden Center think tank on November 2, placing them under review.
However, after a second stash of classified documents were found in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur to serve as special counsel to investigate, after intense scrutiny and pressure from Republican lawmakers.
The most recent news came Saturday, when special counsel to the president Richard Sauber disclosed in a statement that five additional pages of documents with classified markings were found at Biden’s Delaware home Thursday evening, meaning that six classified documents had been retrieved from the house in addition to the documents discovered in the garage.
Sauber explained that when Biden’s personal attorneys identified one classified document at Biden’s home on Wednesday, they stopped searching for additional documents, due to the fact that they did not have clearance to view those materials.
Biden confirmed the documents were in a locked garage with his Corvette when answering a question Thursday from Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, saying, “By the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street.”
Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute, highlighted the fact that it is “risky and irresponsible to keep classified information in an improperly secured location” and said that the president’s handling of the documents is “certainly concerning.”
“The fact that President Biden continued to find classified documents as recently as this past week, even after having first identified this problem in early November and having identified more documents in December, is certainly concerning,” Jaffer said. “At the same time, it is also extremely concerning that classified documents were found in former President Trump’s possession long after he had been asked to turn any such documents over, and after he had received a subpoena for such documents.”
“While it still remains unclear why President Biden had such documents in his possession long after he left office and in insecure locations, at least thus far he has not claimed, as former President Trump has, that the documents were appropriately removed, either because they were personal documents — which they are not — or that they had been properly declassified, which there is no evidence yet that they had been,” he added.
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