APTOS: "There's nothing there," President Joe Biden said on Thursday, downplaying the uproar caused by the discovery of old classified documents improperly stored in his personal belongings.
During a trip to California, reporters asked him about the problem, and he responded, " I believe you will discover nothing there."
"I am not sorry. I'm acting in accordance with what the lawyers have instructed me to do. That is precisely what we are doing. There is no such thing."
Just over a week after it was first reported that around a dozen secret documents from Biden's time as vice president to Barack Obama had been found sitting in a former Biden office space, Biden made the defiant remarks. Later, a few more documents were discovered in the president's Delaware garage and home.
The commotion has engulfed the White House and has the potential to overshadow what allies anticipate will be the Democrat's announcement that he will be running for a second term in the election of 2024.
Biden is under intense pressure from the media, Republicans in Congress, and a special counsel-led Justice Department investigation, despite the fact that the case is significantly less serious than Republican Donald Trump's removal of hundreds of documents from the White House to his residence in Florida following his departure from office.
Biden attempted to strike back after the White House went on the defensive for days and refused to answer questions from reporters. He insisted that he is acting appropriately in a situation that, according to the White House, was nothing more than an accidental misplacement of the materials.
After initially expressing displeasure at the fact that reporters asked the question while Biden was in California to support victims of massive flooding and weather-related damage, Biden responded, "Look."
"We discovered a few documents that were filed incorrectly." We gave them to the Justice Department and the Archives right away. He stated, "We're fully cooperating and anticipating a swift resolution."
The issue was first reported by CBS News on January 9 and caught the White House completely off guard. It hurt Biden's reputation as a return to competence and honesty after Trump's scandal-ridden tenure.
The appointment of a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department investigation into Biden's handling of the vice presidential documents is widely viewed as weakening the ongoing investigation into Trump's case by a different special counsel. This is in addition to tarnishing Biden.
Trump, who is running for reelection in 2024, has repeatedly refused to cooperate with the authorities in their search for his much larger haul of classified documents. However, the Justice Department's desire to avoid appearing to treat Trump more harshly in a situation that is already politically explosive makes it less likely that the Republican will be prosecuted.
Congressional Republicans, who took control of the US House of Representatives this month from far-right conservatives, have already announced that they will launch severe investigations of their own.
Republicans were accused of "faking outrage" over Biden's documents by the White House on Tuesday.