(AUBURN, Wash.) — Police in Washington state said they have arrested a suspect who allegedly tried to abduct a barista through a drive-thru window.
The Auburn Police Department had released surveillance footage of the incident — which occurred shortly after 5 a.m. local time on Monday — while seeking to identify the suspect.
“The suspect seen here attempted to drag the victim through the window using a looped zip tie device,” the department said on social media Monday. “The victim was able to fight off the attacker.”
In the nine-second video, the barista can be seen handing the driver cash through the drive-thru window, at which point he grabs her wrist in one hand while holding an apparent zip tie in the other. The barista is able to break free and the suspect then drives off, the video shows.
Police added that the suspect has a “unique tattoo” on his left forearm that appeared to be the word “Chevrolet.”
On Tuesday, the department announced that it had arrested a suspect in the case “after overwhelming support from the community.”
Auburn Police Department spokesperson Colby Crossley told ABC News that police received “numerous” tips leading them to the suspect, who was arrested Tuesday morning at his home in Auburn on a kidnapping charge.
“Multiple people called in saying they knew the person and were able to give a name,” Crossley said.
“Obviously we had such great evidence,” he added, noting that the tattoo and side profile of the suspect was captured in the surveillance footage.
Police also found evidence in the suspect’s vehicle “linking him to the crime,” Crossley said.
It’s unclear if the suspect and victim knew each other. “That’s part of the investigation,” Crossley said.
The suspect has not been publicly identified. He is scheduled to have his first court appearance Wednesday morning, at which time police plan to release his name, Crossley said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department considered but decided against sending FBI agents to President Joe Biden’s Delaware home to monitor his attorneys’ search for classified documents, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The detail was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Both the president’s attorneys and the Justice Department agreed to instead have Biden’s lawyers conduct the searches for classified documents, according to the sources.
It was something both sides agreed to, sources said, in part because Biden and his attorneys were cooperating with the Justice Department.
In three separate searches, Biden’s lawyers found classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and post-vice presidential office in Washington, D.C., according to the White House.
The revelation of classified documents found at Biden’s home led Attorney General Merrick Garland to last week appoint a special counsel to review Biden’s handling of classified materials while out of office.
The Justice Department and the FBI are declining to comment on the discussions.
The mixture of incomplete and shifting statements out of the White House in the weeklong span since the story broke has drawn parallels to the torrent of increasingly damning details that emerged immediately following the search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August.
Due to the ongoing nature of a criminal investigation, the Justice Department and special counsel’s office won’t comment on the distinctions between the two matters, citing longstanding department policy.
No evidence, so far, to support Biden search, experts say
But legal experts, including former federal prosecutors reached by ABC News, say at least so far, that for Biden there doesn’t appear to be evidence that would justify the dramatic and unprecedented step of the FBI seeking a search warrant on the current president’s private residence.
To do so, as they did for Trump, prosecutors would have to persuade a federal judge that there’s probable cause that by conducting a search they would find evidence of a crime or multiple crimes.
Cooperation is a critical difference
At their core, experts say, the primary difference still between the two cases as they currently stand is the “full cooperation” currently being promised by Biden’s attorneys and widespread allegations of obstruction against Trump and his legal team dating back to as early as last spring.
“[In Biden’s case] it has to do with somebody coming forward and self-reporting, ‘we found these few documents,’ they turn them over,” former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said in an interview with ABC News. “If Trump had done the same, there would have been no grand jury there probably would have been no search warrant and probably would have avoided a potential criminal problem.”
In the case of the search of Mar-a-Lago, ABC News reporting, in addition to a redacted affidavit made public by the Justice Department, shows, in still-limited detail, what investigators presented in order to secure signoff on the historic search. It included an extensive track record of months of back-and-forth between Trump’s attorneys, their repeated resistance to handing back the documents, a Trump attorney signing a sworn statement in response to a grand jury subpoena that all docs had been returned after which DOJ built evidence through witnesses and other means that that was false.
“Prosecutors had reason to believe that, despite prior declarations made by Trump attorneys that all classified materials had been turned over, the former president was still maintaining custody of classified materials that could not be accounted for,” former federal prosecutor Joseph Moreno told ABC News. “It seems those concerns were borne out when the raid by the FBI on Mar-a-Lago in August in fact did turn up additional classified documents.”
At one point, DOJ even made a visit to Mar-a-Lago where prosecutors said they were “explicitly prohibited” from opening or looking inside of any boxes in a storage room where later, during the FBI’s search, dozens of classified records were found.
While there is no way to completely rule out the possibility of a court-authorized search of Biden’s properties sometime in the future, such a decision typically only comes once prosecutors believe they have exhausted all other options to get the evidence they need.
“The only reason why Trump’s place got searched was because of the obstruction and the lying,” said attorney Mark Zaid, who specializes in national security and security clearance law. “There could be people who end up getting into trouble [in the case of potential mishandling of Biden’s records]. It’s very easy to be potentially criminally liable for mishandling of classified information … but mishandling of classified information is not grounds for the FBI to raid someone’s house, certainly not a president, former or current.”
A voluntary search?
Some experts have raised the possibility that Biden’s team could offer to have the FBI conduct a voluntary search of his properties to ensure there’s no remaining classified records, giving them the full kind of access that Trump prohibited.
“It is possible sure they could and it might make sense for the [FBI] to have some folks go in or [the Archives] to do some searching,” Zaid said. “The problem is where would they find anything? That’s where we just don’t have the ability to ask questions.”
Akerman said such a proposal would typically be a nonstarter for defense attorneys.
“I never heard of a situation where the FBI goes in and just does a search because somebody self-reports,” Akerman said. “Normally, even in a criminal case, what you normally do in the first instance unless you have some reason to believe that somebody is lying to you or is going to destroy records or in doing something untoward as you had with the Trump situation, you just give a grand jury subpoena.”
And the idea of a voluntary search would also not likely have great value to prosecutors, Akerman said.
“If somebody knows ahead of time, what’s the point if they’re really going to hide something?” he said. “They would have moved it off premises or gone somewhere else with it. The whole idea of the search warrant is to catch somebody by surprise because you’ve got probable cause that a crime was committed and evidence of the crime exists in that location.”
In the case of Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors identified three such crimes they believed they’d find evidence of at Mar-a-Lago, obstruction of justice, the Espionage Act and unauthorized possession or concealment of government docs. They laid out — after months of investigation and witness interviews — the evidence that a judge agreed with them said would likely be present in Mar-a-Lago and even in specific areas of the club.
This is not to say that similar facts won’t develop in the coming weeks or months to justify a search of one or more of Biden’s residences.
But in the Justice Department the decision to search Trump’s residence was seen as a true last resort move after months and months of a complete breakdown in trust that continues to this day. Indeed, sources have told ABC Newss the government has been fighting in closed court proceedings in recent weeks to have Trump verify he still doesn’t possess classified records.
“There could come a time [in the Biden investigation] when somebody thinks someone is lying and that would cause a huge, huge problem for sure, obviously,” Zaid said. “But I anticipate we’re not going to get there, at least at this stage.”
For now, experts say the next likely steps for special counsel Robert Hur in his newly launched investigation will probably be in line with basic investigative steps taken early on after the Justice Department was alerted to classified documents that were present at Mar-a-Lago early last year.
“What they’re gonna do is, they’re gonna go in, they’re gonna question people and interview people who were present in that office in Washington,” Akerman said. “They’re going to interview people who were responsible for putting the documents in the storage area in Biden’s home. They’re going to interview all those people and they’re going to find out how that happened and how it got there.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday continued to avoid answering reporters’ questions on the ongoing classified document drama as the White House faces questions of transparency about what it’s told the American public as opposed to the Justice Department.
Face-to-face with reporters at an Oval Office meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earlier in the day, Biden appeared to smile as a reporter shouted whether he would commit to speaking with the special counsel named to look into the case. Biden has not yet offered a public reaction since Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur last week to investigate the potential mishandling of classified documents.
White House difficulty dealing with the perception problem continued as press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, again, struggled at the podium when confronted with reporters’ questions in the first press briefing since news broke that Biden aides found five more classified documents — which Jean-Pierre did not mention at Friday’s briefing.
The documents were discovered on Thursday, according to the White House, which did not disclose the find until Saturday.
“On Friday, you stood here, though, and were asked about these documents, by our count, some 18 times,” said ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega. “At that point, the president’s lawyers had found these five additional pages of classified document — so did you not know, on Friday, that those documents had been found when you were at the podium, or are you being directed by someone to not be forthcoming?”
“I have been forthcoming from this podium,” Jean-Pierre replied, before later admitting that she “did not know” about the additional pages. “I had the information that you all had at the time.”
Jean-Pierre has, so far, referred all questions to the Justice Department.
“I’m just going to continue to be prudent here. I’m going to let this ongoing review that is happening — this legal process that is happening — let that process continue under the special counsel. We’re not — I’m not — going to comment from here,” Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.
“Look, guys, you guys can ask me this 100 times, 200 times, if you wish. I’m going to keep saying the same thing,” she added later on. “I hear your question. It’s been asked. It’s been answered. It’s been noted.”
Jean-Pierre told reporters that Biden’s mood has been “very clear,” despite reports he has been frustrated by how much this situation has overshadowed his agenda.
“The president has confidence — I can tell you this that the president and his team rightfully took action when they learned that the documents existed,” she insisted.
To help deal with the public relations problem, the White House counsel’s office spokesperson, Ian Sams, held his first on the record briefing call with reporters Tuesday afternoon to take questions on the matter ahead of Jean-Pierre’s briefing — but revealed very little new information.
For the first time, Sams explained why Biden’s personal lawyers were cleaning out his office at the Penn Biden Center in the first place, saying “trusted aides” were involved since “this is the president of the United States, and these are personal materials.”
Sams also faced questions about why the White House did not disclose the discovery of five additional pages until news broke on Saturday morning and offered one justification for withholding information on the investigation to the public. He said releasing incomplete information could do a disservice to the public — and appeared to acknowledge more materials could be discovered.
“The investigation may uncover additional information,” Sams said. “It may reveal additional facts…But when you are releasing impartial or periodic information … you run the risk that the public isn’t served by incomplete information at times. And so we understand that there’s a tension here and we’ve been trying to balance that tension while being totally cooperative with the Justice Department.”
“On Saturday, the president’s personal attorneys, the White House counsel’s office, we released additional statements. We thought it was important to address information that we had put out previously in the week, but we also wanted to make sure that you all had a fulsome explanation of the process so far,” Sams said, not acknowledging the host of additional questions Saturday’s statement dredged up.
While Sams, nor any of the president’s lawyers, have appeared at a White House press briefing, he has released statements taking on Republicans’ attacks.
“House Republicans have no credibility,” he said in a statement on Monday. “Their demands should be met with skepticism and they should face questions themselves about why they are politicizing this issue and admitting they actually do not care about the underlying classified material.”
“As President Biden has said repeatedly, he takes classified information seriously, which is why he immediately directed his team to ensure the documents were sent back to the government. President Biden is doing the right thing and is cooperating fully with a thorough review, but House Republicans are playing politics in a shamelessly hypocritical attempt to attack President Biden,” Sams added.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday afternoon punched back at the White House and said Democrats were the hypocrites.
“They found out President Biden had these documents, not under lock, but a simple push of a button that could open a garage door … prior to an election, they kept it secret,” the top House Republican told reporters on Capitol Hill. “And no time did he get raided by the FBI. At no time did they come forward and say who was there could actually see these documents that are sitting in the garage behind a corvette.”
McCarthy said House Republicans plan to look into both Trump and Biden’s special counsel investigations. This comes after House Oversight chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., requested visitor logs and communications from the Biden White House but said investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents was not a priority.
“My concern is how there’s such a discrepancy in how former President Trump was treated, by raiding Mar-a-Lago, getting security camera, taking pictures of documents on the floor, going through Melania’s closet, versus Joe Biden, your personal lawyers who don’t have security clearance, they can go through, they can just keep looking and keep looking and determine whatever is there,” Comer said Sunday on CNN.
Some outstanding questions
There are still several outstanding questions the White House has not answered.
One primary question is why wasn’t the DOJ investigation wasn’t made public until two months after the first documents were found. Another is what prompted the president’s personal lawyers to go back to his Wilmington Home on Jan. 11, after document discoveries in November, before the midterms, and in December.
Reporters have also asked Biden whether he will agree to sit down for an interview with the special counsel but, so far, have no answers.
Finally, the question as to what exactly is in the classified documents has not been answered by the White House.
ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear the appeal of a 33-year-old transgender woman from Guatemala who is seeking asylum in a case her attorney calls life or death.
Estrella Santos Zacarias, whose claims of gender violence and discrimination were rejected by American immigration officials was deported to Mexico in 2019 where she has faced ongoing health and safety challenges, according to a sworn affidavit from her reviewed by ABC News.
Most recently, she was beaten at a bus stop by three people and, months prior, she was bludgeoned unconscious at her workplace, her affidavit states.
“A transgender woman who was deported by the US to Honduras earlier this year was murdered in the capital city of Tegucigalpa,” Santos Zacarias’ attorney Sunny Shah wrote in a letter to officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) seeking immediate humanitarian parole while her case is pending other appeals. “This is the harsh reality that Estrella will likely face if she is denied this request for parole.”
Her legal team is seeking federal court review of an immigration judge’s ruling that she had not demonstrated adequate evidence of likely future persecution and therefore didn’t qualify for asylum.
The Biden administration argues in court documents that federal judges shouldn’t get involved in the case, primarily because Santos Zacarias failed to exhaust other administrative appeals available to her at the time.
Immigration authorities also say they should generally have broad discretion over their decisions, free from the possibility of unnecessary judicial interference.
While Santos Zacarias’ case hinges on technical arguments over jurisdiction and immigration procedure, its outcome could have significant implications for thousands of asylum-seekers hoping to challenge removal orders in court, immigrant advocates say.
More than 283,000 migrants applied for asylum to enter the U.S. between 2018 and 2020, according to the most recent data available from the Department of Homeland Security. Roughly 11% of them — or 31,429 people — were granted asylum during the same period.
A 2021 study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found an estimated 30,900 LGBTQ people applied for asylum in the United States between 2012 and 2017, with nearly 4,000 seeking asylum due to fear of persecution on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Most were natives of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Upholding a requirement that applicants like Santos Zacarias file an additional appeal for reconsideration — within the immigration system — when their claims are rejected would further strain an apparatus already backlogged and overwhelmed, a group of legal services advisers told the high court.
For Santos Zacarias, a Supreme Court decision in her favor could mean another shot at asylum and escaping what her attorney calls “imminent danger.”
She has said, according to immigration records, that she first fled Guatemala for the U.S. as a teenager after suffering multiple sexual assaults, death threats, harassment and discrimination because of her gender identity.
“I am constantly living in fear wondering who will try to attack me next,” she wrote in the signed affidavit to USCIS dated Nov. 1, 2022. “This has weighed heavy on me … I desperately need your permission to return to the U.S. where I can live safely while my case is processing.”
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy insisted Monday that he “always” had some questions related to now-Rep. George Santos’ resume amid ongoing revelations about the lies and embellishments by the freshman lawmaker from New York.
“I never knew all about his resume or not, but I always had a few questions about it,” McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters.
Among the claims related to Santos is that in 2021 a campaign staffer of his had masqueraded as McCarthy’s chief of staff in a bid to gin up support for Santos, as reported by The New York Times last week.
McCarthy said Monday that “it happened and I know they corrected, but I was not notified about that until a later day.”
When asked if he had spoken with Santos about the reported duplicity over his chief of staff, McCarthy told reporters, “Yeah, but I didn’t know about it until a later date, unfortunately.”
Santos, a self-described financier and businessman, has admitted lying about where he went to college and said he misspoke about working directly for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, who say they have no records of employing him.
Other parts of his background, including about an animal charity he said he ran and the extent of his Jewish ancestry, have also been challenged.
McCarthy previously declined to comment on the controversy surrounding Santos, which first emerged in December, until after the new Congress began and he won the gavel.
The speaker has since sought to play down some of Santos’ fabrications while saying that Santos was “gonna have to build the trust here.”
“The voters made the decision, and he has a right to serve here,” McCarthy told ABC News’ Rachel Scott last week. “If there is something that rises to the occasion that he did something wrong, then we’ll deal with that at that time.”
McCarthy’s latest comments come amid pressure from New York Democrats for him and other GOP leaders to reveal what they knew, if anything, about Santos’ false statements on the campaign trail — particularly after a Times report last week that the embellishments were known among some state Republicans.
Reps. Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres on Sunday sent a letter to McCarthy, House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) President Dan Conston requesting that they each “forthrightly cooperate” with investigations of Santos in the House and elsewhere.
“[W]e urge you to inform the American people about your knowledge of Mr. Santos’s web of deceit prior to the election,” Goldman and Torres wrote.
Stefanik would not discuss Goldman and Torres’ letter with reporters on Monday and a spokesperson for CLF declined to comment on it to ABC News. The group did not financially support Santos’ election bid last fall.
Santos has not been accused of any crime and told The New York Post last month, “I am not a criminal.” He has admitted some lies but said they were more like routine resume embellishments.
Seven House Republicans have called on him to resign.
“I was elected by 142,000 people. Until those same 142,000 people tell me they don’t want me, we’ll find out in two years,” Santos said last week on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, referencing calls for his ouster.
(WASHINGTON) — On Monday morning, thousands of residents flooded the historic Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in southeast Washington, D.C. — the throughway for the city’s annual peace walk and parade in commemoration of the late civil rights icon.
More than 120 organizations registered to participate in the parade, the event’s first return to force since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“Just don’t give up the fight. And that’s what it means for me today,” Denise Rolark Barnes, co-chair of the MLK Holiday DC Committee, told ABC News.
“We have to continue to support each other, to fortify ourselves in the best way that we can,” Barnes said of the significance of Monday’s event.
Organizers also warned of the commercialization of the national holiday that to many may be seen as more of a day off from work and school than a moment to reflect and engage in activism.
“The holiday, as they say, is not a day off — it’s a day on,” said Philip Pannell, executive director of the Anacostia Coordinating Council.
“Dr. King said everyone can be great because everyone can serve. So if people can do something to help make this a better community, then we’re keeping the spirit of Dr King alive,” Pannell said.
The peace walk and parade, attended by hundreds of area organizations and thousands of participants, commenced at the R.I.S.E. Demonstration Center, where groups geared up for a music-filled march ending at Anacostia Park in southeast Washington.
The parade and walk featured bands and choreographed dance troops, and community organizations set up stands offering free food, coffee and personal care products for attendees.
Across Washington, President Joe Biden commemorated the holiday alongside Rev. Al Sharpton at the National Action Network’s annual breakfast for King.
In a keynote address, Biden touted the work that he said his administration has undertaken to improve the lives of Black and brown Americans.
“We have a lot of unfinished work to do though,” he said. “A lot of unfinished work. We have to keep building on it and defend our progress because of this new Congress.”
Biden, who also gave a sermon on Sunday at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist, where King had preached, highlighted investments in historically Black colleges and universities and Black-owned small businesses.
He told the audience, including civil rights leaders and members of Congress, that the United States stands at an “inflection point” on King’s project of racial equality.
Biden received robust applause after noting his historic nomination of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the high court. “She’s about the smartest one of all of ’em,” he said.
Of what he called unfinished promises, Biden said he didn’t want to hear a word from “the other side” about his college student debt forgiveness program, which is being challenged in court. He criticized Republicans for what he called efforts to stall debt cancellation that would largely benefit Black students, 70% of whom, he noted, receive Pell grants that would be wiped out completely if his program is enacted.
“The path is clear: To go forward, we need to go together. So let’s be guided by Dr. King’s light,” Biden said, “and by the charge of scripture which is ‘let us never grow weary in doing what is right.'”
Vice President Kamala Harris marked the holiday at George Washington University, where she participated in a leadership and service event alongside students and staff and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Harris said the holiday was an opportunity to “work toward the ideals upon which our nation was founded, that we still have yet to achieve but we get closer each day when we believe in what is possible.”
And on the National Mall, King’s son Martin Luther King III, Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield and others gathered for a wreath-laying ceremony at King’s memorial.
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — As more questions arise from the discoveries of government documents found in President Joe Biden’s offices and home, elected officials and government watchdog groups are expressing concerns about the security of important documents.
The latest news comes months after it was revealed that former President Donald Trump had several boxes of top-secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago ranch last summer.
John Cohen, an ABC News contributor and former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, spoke with ABC’s “Start Here” Monday about the probe and how government documents are handled.
START HERE: John, I should point out you were acting under President Biden, you resigned last spring when Biden’s full-time pick was about to be confirmed…but you know this space very well. How do documents like this just keep popping up?
JOHN COHEN:I worked in the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and, as you pointed out, the Biden administration, and I had security clearances. I had broad access to classified information. In fact, during some of that time, I also was in charge of offices that conducted security investigations or worked to safeguard classified information. And unless you are working in an organization like the CIA or another intelligence community organization, where all you’re working with is classified information, and these types of security violations are not really that uncommon when you are working with large quantities of documents and you are co-mingling classified reports with unclassified documents. It is not uncommon for there to be situations where, inadvertently, people will mix them together and walk out of a SCIF or secured facility with a document they shouldn’t have. And when that happens, there is a very well-established process known as a security investigation.
And with a security investigation, we’ll look at real quickly: How sensitive were the documents? Were they clearly marked? How were they mishandled? Meaning, was it an accident or was it inadvertently inadvertent or was it intentional if it was intentional? The investigation will then try to determine was that intentional mishandling for nefarious purposes. We’ve had situations where people remove classified information because they were writing a book. In other cases, people remove classified information because they intend to give it to a foreign adversary. The latter obviously being much more serious. So all of that is pretty customary when looking at a security violation or an instance where there’s been mishandling of classified information.
START HERE:Well, customary seems like the weird word, though. You mentioned a SCIF, which are these like secure locations. So are those documents always supposed to be viewed in those secure locations, or is it allowable for a public official to take those home, maybe to an unsecured house or a garage or whatever and look them over there? What are the protocols with the classified stuff specifically?
COHEN:The short answer is, it depends. There are various grades of classified information. Some of it requiring much more stringent handling processes. And there’s other classified information where you can lock it up in a desk. It is not uncommon for individuals with classified information, if they have the right storage in their homes, to be able to take classified information at home. Some people actually have SCIFs built into their homes if they have appropriate permission. So what we don’t know from some of the breathless reporting that we’ve heard thus far is what were these documents that were discovered in the garage, in the Biden residence and in the office? Were they confidential, which really, from a national security perspective, really wouldn’t be that significant.
Most of the security enforcement of the protocols that have to do with protecting and safeguarding that material is on the honor system. Meaning typically the only way that the security officer would know that someone walked out of the office with it – with a top secret or a secret document – is because the person who did it reported it.
START HERE:Oh, there’s no, like, sign out system of, ‘Hey, Hey, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, you had this in your office. You need to sign this out while you take it home.’ That doesn’t exist.
COHEN:There is a very small subset of classified information that there is a sign-in and sign-out process. But for the overwhelming majority of confidential, secret, [and] top secret information, there is not that type of tracking system.
START HERE:Is that a problem, John, from your perspective as somebody who’s led these investigations? Does that need to be revamped or are we cool with that?
COHEN:I think it’s a huge problem. This is why we tend to have so many issues. But think of it this way: There are literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people across the federal government and outside of the federal government with security clearances.
The government over the last five, six, seven years has made strides in identifying behavior that could be suspicious on these government systems. So, for example, if you are working at an intelligence organization and your job is to analyze intelligence on Russia, but the computer system flags you because you’re downloading and printing a lot of intelligence on terrorist organizations, that may result in some type of review. But this idea that every classified paper document is being tracked? That’s just not how the system works.
Think of it this way: I don’t know what your desk is like, but mine’s pretty messy. And when I was working in some of my offices, I would have stacks of paper that were unclassified, stacks of paper that were classified, and I literally had a staff person who every day looked to see what was going into my briefcase to make sure that I didn’t accidentally miss a classified piece of information and accidentally bring it home.
START HERE: And I was about to say who touches these documents is also a thing, right? Because I imagine President Biden is not the one moving his cardboard boxes around when he leaves his job as VP.
COHEN:No, and that’s going to be a huge part of this security review is who actually packed those boxes, you know, were there cover sheets on this information? I’ve heard some reports that said that these were individual pages. Well, were those pages marked? Did they say top secret or classified? On top of it, Were they portion marked, meaning were there little marks in front of each paragraph that said they were classified?
You know we know that the documents in Mar-a-Lago had those cover sheets, right? Those brightly covered cover sheets with big letters stamped on it that said top secret, sensitive, [or] compartmented intelligence. But, we have not heard yet whether cover sheets were on the material found in the Biden home. So, there’s a lot to learn still. Security violations sound very, very nefarious, but in many cases, they’re just accidents.
In many cases, they’re people who were a little bit careless or maybe didn’t, weren’t as careful as they should be. And they accidentally mixed up some papers. They got packed in a box and they got stored away. And that will be another thing that will be looked at and is being looked at in the Mar-a-Lago case involving former President Trump as well is when those documents were secured at those locations who had access to it.
START HERE:You just talked about thousands or hundreds of thousands of documents floating around. I mean, Bush, Clinton, Carter, should they be checking their houses right now? How like how much of an issue do you think this is with other former presidents and vice presidents?
COHEN:I suspect that because of the visibility that the Biden case and the Trump case have generated, that you have a large number of former government officials, whether they be former presidents or others who are looking in their basement at boxes that they’ve stored there since the last government.
START HERE:Do you have boxes full of classified documents we should know about right now, John?
COHEN:Hey, Brad, when I left last time, I didn’t want to bring anything with me. The only thing I took was a bottle of wine that one of my staffers gave me. I left everything else there.
(WASHINGTON) — After House Republicans demanded the White House turn over a log of visitors from President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified documents have been discovered, the White House said Sunday that such a record does not exist.
“Consistent with past precedent of every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them.”
U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told ABC News that they also do not maintain visitor logs of private residences, though the Secret Service does provide security screenings for visitors.
The agency has access to the visitor logs of official government buildings such as the White House and the vice president’s residence, Guglielmi said. Those visitor logs are kept by the National Archives.
In a letter to White House chief of staff Ron Klain on Sunday, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the new House Oversight Committee chairman, requested visitors logs at the Wilmington residence dating from Biden’s inauguration to the present, with a deadline of Jan. 30.
The committee is also seeking all documents related to the search of Biden’s homes “and other locations by Biden aides for classified documents,” Comer wrote.
“President Biden’s mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security,” Comer wrote. “Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams initially acknowledged the letter to ABC News but did not directly say if the administration would comply.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has declined to substantively answer questions on the matter, referring nearly all inquiries on the classified documents to the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department, which is investigating.
Biden’s attorneys have said that classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president were found at a former office in Washington, D.C., as well as at his home in Wilmington.
A lawyer for him said last week: “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.”
Comer has also asked the National Archives to provide all communications between the agency, the White House and the Justice Department regarding the classified documents discovered at Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center. ABC News has asked the National Archives if it plans to comply with the request from the Oversight Committee.
Comer’s letters to the White House and the National Archives were not accompanied by subpoenas.
Biden returned to Washington from Delaware on Monday and ignored further questions on the documents and the investigation. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday said he was appointing Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of the classified materials.
Over the weekend, White House special counsel Richard Sauber said that five more classified pages — in addition to a one-page document discovered on Wednesday — were found on Thursday in Wilmington and are now in the Justice Department’s possession.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., the No. 3 Democrat in the chamber, called the controversy “certainly embarrassing.”
“It’s embarrassing that you would find a small number of documents, certainly not on purpose. They don’t think it’s the right thing and they’ve been moving to correct it, working with the Department of Justice, working with everyone involved, with the archives. And so from my perspective, you know, it’s one of those moments that obviously they wish hadn’t happened,” she said on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“But what I’m most concerned about,” Stabenow added, “this is the kind of thing that the Republicans love.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last week that he sees Congress having a role in investigating the matter, separate from the Justice Department.
(WASHINGTON) — Sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News the December discovery of classified documents inside President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home served as a tipping point in the lead-up to a special counsel.
That was the moment, sources said, that it became almost certain in the minds of investigators that an outside prosecutor would likely have to be appointed to look into Biden apparently retaining sensitive records from his time as vice president.
On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he had done just that, naming Robert Hur as special counsel and citing the recommendation of U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch, who was reviewing the matter.
While it remains unclear if Biden played any role in the classified documents being in his home or if he was personally aware they were there, sources said their presence meant there would need to be more intensive investigation.
It’s not unusual for presidents to take classified materials out of the White House while they are in office. But the records at issue were from Biden’s vice presidency, which ended in 2017, his lawyers have said.
As one source said, classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president being discovered in November at his old office at the Penn Biden Center — a Washington, D.C., think tank — could more quickly be explained away. But additional materials being found at his residence raised the specter of him having some kind of personal involvement or interest in them being there.
The sources said that while all the documents, including those found at the Penn Biden Center, are being studied for a damage assessment, the records at Biden’s house in Delaware will be closely looked at to see if it suggests the president may have been able to use them for personal, financial or some other gain.
Garland has been careful to try and make clear that he is running the Justice Department independently, without any favoritism toward President Biden, who appointed him.
The discovery of the classified documents at Biden’s office and home late last year came around the same time Garland was grappling with whether to appoint a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, after the former president left the White House.
Within days of classified documents being found at Biden’s old office, Trump announced he was running for president and Garland announced the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel in that case, citing “extraordinary circumstances.”
At the time, the public didn’t know that Garland was already aware of the discovery of classified records from the period when Biden was not in office.
Even more documents being located last week made it clearer that a special counsel was needed, sources told ABC News.
Department of Justice officials have emphasized that they’ve made no determination on whether Biden intended to break any law — but that they now must figure out as best they can what happened with the classified records, and they cannot merely rely on the account from the Biden team.
One critical question is why there was not a more exhaustive search of Biden’s residence after the December discovery.
An attorney for Biden, Richard Sauber, said last week that the White House will cooperate with the DOJ investigation.
“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,” Sauber said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Adam Schiff, a former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that classified documents recently discovered to be in President Joe Biden’s possession from his time as vice president need to be assessed for their national security implications.
“I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” the California Democrat said of the Biden documents during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” when pressed by co-anchor Jonathan Karl about any national security risks.
Schiff said that he would like to see more information from the intelligence community on the details of the documents, noting that he expects similar details regarding the trove of classified materials that were recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
“We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents,” Schiff said. “I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the think tank as well as the home of President Biden. I’d like to know what these documents were. I’d like to know what the [intelligence community’s] assessment is, whether there was any risk of exposure and what the harm would be and whether any mitigation needs to be done.”
Beginning last week, the White House acknowledged in a series of statements that Biden’s attorneys in November found classified records from his time as vice president while they were packing up his files at an old office in Washington, D.C.
Further searches by Biden’s team found classified records at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, according to the White House, which disclosed the matter to the public amid news that the Department of Justice was investigating.
The president is cooperating and his lawyers quickly flagged the issue to the National Archives in the fall, his aides have stressed.
On “This Week,” Karl asked Schiff whether the White House had been forthcoming enough, given the two-month delay since the initial documents were discovered before the 2022 midterm election.
“I think the administration will need to answer that question. I’m going to reserve judgment until they do,” Schiff said.
He said he thought Attorney General Merrick Garland made the right decision to appoint a special counsel to review Biden’s handling of the sensitive documents — a view echoed by Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who also appeared on “This Week” on Sunday.
“The attorney general has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public. And here, I don’t think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel,” Schiff said. “And I think that special counsel will do the proper assessment.”
But, he said, “I still would like to see Congress do its own assessment of and receive an assessment from the intelligence community of whether there was an exposure to others of these documents, whether there was harm to national security in the case of either set of documents with either president.”
Schiff criticized new House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., who has notified the Biden White House of a congressional probe but said last year that looking at Trump’s handling of classified documents “will not be a priority.”
“Those requests [to the Biden White House] are completely hypocritical when you consider what he said about the Mar-a-Lago situation. I think Congress ought to handle both situations the same way,” Schiff said.
And while “the Biden administration ought to cooperate with any appropriate inquiry from Congress,” Schiff said, oversight efforts shouldn’t be used as political roadblocks.
“Congress shouldn’t try to interfere with the investigations. I think, sadly, that’s what Mr. Comer’s object is,” Schiff said.
