Joe Biden under fire as second batch of classified documents found

Classified documents have been found at a location associated with Joe Biden after an investigation was launched into the discovery of another cache of White House files at a separate site.

The new find, first reported by NBC News, followed the announcement earlier this week that classified documents were discovered in November at a private office used by Biden in Washington D.C. after his vice-presidency. The latest cache was found by his aides, the site said, but the “classification level, number and precise location” of the documents was “not immediately clear”.

The files row is a “growing political embarrassment for the White House”, said the BBC. Under the terms of the Presidential Records Act, presidential and vice-presidential records are supposed to be stored at the National Archive. After the first cache was found, Biden said he was “surprised to learn” of their existence and was “cooperating fully” with a Justice Department investigation.

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The president had described Donald Trump as “irresponsible” after classified documents were recovered in an FBI raid on the former US leader’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida.

But now Republicans seeking to draw a “false equivalence” with the Trump discoveries have been “handed fresh ammunition”, said The Guardian.

Biden’s “many defenders in the American media will be quick to pooh-pooh any suggestion that their man is as reckless or dangerous” as Trump, wrote Freddy Gray for The Spectator. But “this latest ‘secret files’ story” is “catnip for dark Republican theories” about the “real motives for hounding” the former president over his document handling.

Trump has been quick to put the boot in. In a post on his social media site Truth Social, he asked: “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?”