Snowden: Biden appears to have taken more classified documents than many whistleblowers
U.S. President Joe Biden appears to have taken more classified documents than many whistleblowers, a former U.S. intelligence official said.
“It’s worth noting that the president seems to have picked up more classified documents than many whistleblowers. To compare, Riality Winner (convicted in the U.S. for leaking from the National Security Agency – ed.) was sentenced to five years for just one document. Meanwhile, Biden, (Donald) Trump, (Bill) Clinton, (David) Petraeus … these guys have dozens, hundreds (of documents – ed.). And no prison,” Snowden wrote on Twitter.
In his view, the real scandal with the president is not that Biden took the classified documents, but that the U.S. Justice Department discovered them a week before the midterm elections and chose to keep quiet about the story.
The classified documents in Biden’s office at the think tank named after him in Washington, D.C., were previously reported by CBS News. The materials, which relate to the period when the current head of the White House was vice president, were found by his confidants before the midterm elections in November 2022.
CNN later reported that among the secret documents found was intelligence about Ukraine, Iran and Britain.
The documents were immediately turned over to the national archives, but the Justice Department is now verifying how they got into the private office. The White House acknowledged that Biden used the said room between 2017 and 2020, when he was no longer working in the administration.