White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was needled on President Joe Biden‘s commitment to transparency after additional classified documents were found at his home in Delaware as recently as this week.
For the second consecutive day, Jean-Pierre was peppered with questions, which repeatedly raised more queries, after she took the podium more than an hour following Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing special counsel Robert Hur to investigate the matter regarding the documents from Biden’s vice presidency.
“I’m not going to go into details from here,” the press secretary told reporters Thursday. “I’m not going to go into specifics from here. A review is ongoing.”
“I’m not going to get into the decision that was made by the attorney general,” she added. “This is a president who believes in the independence of the Justice Department.”
Jean-Pierre was grilled on why the White House did not disclose the second batch of documents that were found in Biden’s Wilmington garage last month when she and the president commented on the first batch located in the Washington, D.C., office of his think tank last November earlier this week. One more record from former President Barack Obama‘s administration was discovered in Wilmington this week, concluding Biden’s personal lawyers’ search.
“I’m not going to go beyond what the president said. I’m not going to go beyond what the lawyers say,” she said. “There has not been a limit on transparency.”
When asked what the White House was hiding, she provided a one-word response: “Nothing.”
Jean-Pierre declined to commit the White House to publishing visitor logs from Biden’s private properties in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, instead citing the White House visitor logs as evidence of the administration’s belief in transparency. She similarly declined to clarify whether the room adjacent to Biden’s Wilmington garage is “the personal library” the president referred to earlier Thursday.
“He did not know the records were there,” she said. “He was surprised the records were there.”
Jean-Pierre also delegated reporters with the responsibility of drawing comparisons between Biden’s troubles with classified documents and those of former President Donald Trump.
“I’ll leave you all to pontificate and do your punditry,” she said.
There was an awkward moment as well when Jean-Pierre claimed Biden learned of the special counsel’s appointment through Garland’s press conference. Biden was attending the funeral of Obama-era Defense Secretary Ash Carter at the time.
In a statement shared before the briefing, White House lawyer Richard Sauber reiterated Biden would cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake,” he said.
