A trove of documents Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gave to the University of Delaware’s library from his time in the Senate likely will not be released before the 2020 election.
The papers, which have been kept secret since being donated in 2012, could have been released on Dec. 3, but the date came and went without any action to make the collection available to the public.
Now, it appears Americans will not be able to see the records, which would provide insight into Biden’s actions during his 36-year Senate career, before they begin casting votes this election cycle.
With the failure to release the records one month before the Iowa caucuses, voters may not have the full story on Biden’s thinking for issues that have resurfaced during his presidential campaign, including those related to his 1970s-era opposition to school busing and his handling of the confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court when Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Biden, a 1965 graduate from the University of Delaware, was a U.S. senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009 when he left office to become vice president until January 2016. He ran two unsuccessful campaigns for president in 1988 and 2008.
Biden, 77, announced the donation of the documents to his alma mater in 2011 and 1,850 boxes of archival records were delivered in June 2012.
L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin, the curator for the Biden records, initially said the records would be held for two years after Biden retires from “public office,” following a processing period, and that they would not be released online before Dec. 31, 2019.
But the language on the library’s website changed in April, just before Biden announced his 2020 campaign, to say the papers would not be released until the “later date” of Dec. 31 or two years after Biden retires from “public life.”
“There is no update,” Andrea Boyle Tippett, a spokeswoman for the University of Delaware, said in an email to the Washington Examiner regarding the release.
A spokesperson for the Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment on if they support the release of the Biden papers.
The trove includes 415 gigabytes of electronic records, which according to the Washington Post, contains correspondence, committee reports, and drafts of legislation.
Biden, who hopes to prevent President Trump from being reelected, is a leading candidate in the Democratic presidential primary one month out from the Iowa caucuses. He improved his fundraising in the final quarter of 2019 with a $22.7 million haul but remained behind his rivals former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who raised $24.7 million and $34.5 million, respectively.
