NARA obtains Biden documents without FBI raid via emails

Emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act filing show the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sought to discreetly obtain nine boxes of President Joe Biden’s classified documents from a Boston law firm last November.

Former President Donald Trump has long argued the FBI, Biden’s Justice Department, and the Trump-critical leadership at NARA has not treated him equally, noting the Biden classified documents sought are potentially related to his retention of classified documents when Biden was not the president as Trump’s documents are.

The FBI raided Trump’s private residence to retrieve post-presidential boxes at Mar-a-Lago last year. The email sent on the night of the November 2020 midterm election shows no plan for an armed FBI raid, but a mere visit from two NARA staffers, the Washington Examiner reported.

“On Wednesday, I will be asking you to send two staff to retrieve and then secure some materials from a law firm,” a senior NARA official wrote in an email with the subject line “Urgent Matter.”

“This needs to be done with the utmost professionalism and discretion.”

NARA’s Debra Wall issued a letter to Congress in March about the archives’ retrieval of the Biden classified documents, months after the email planned the Nov. 9 visit to a Boston law firm, moving them to John F. Kennedy Presidential Library also in Boston.

The boxes in Boston had been moved from Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., and the move to the JFK library was directed by the Biden DOJ, but without an armed raid as it did with Trump in August 2022.

“It is likely we will need to pick up [redacted] boxes on Monday,” a NARA official’s follow-up Nov. 4, 2022 email read, the Examiner reported. “More as this evolves.”

NARA took possession of the documents and not the FBI, as it did with the Trump raid, according to another Nov. 7, 2022, email.

“Change of plans,” that one read, according to the report. “We are now intending to take temporary physical custody of all materials.”

The NARA retrieval was confirmed in a Nov. 9, 2022 email, according to the Examiner.

“9 bxs picked up in Boston and being secured at JFK,” a NARA official wrote.

The coordination with the Biden officials and NARA – without armed FBI swat teams – have not been previously disclosed, according to the Examiner.

Biden was silent on the issue of having retentioned classified documents from his time as vice president under former President Barack Obama before the November 2022 midterms, despite the very public raid and reporting on the Trump classified documents.

Trump has argued the president has declassification authority a then-VP Biden would not have had.

Special counsel Robert Hur had been appointed to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents and the White House has confirmed Hur has interviewed Biden since – with a report of the findings to eventually come – according to the Examiner.

“We know of one email in particular [related to China] that read like a government document,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky, told Monday’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “We’ve talked to different sources. We’re very concerned that that was a classified document and that that was one of the classified documents that Joe Biden may have had in his possession.

“We don’t know anything that Joe Biden had in his possession,” Comer added. “All we know is instead of one location under lock, which is what Trump had at Mar-a-Lago, we have at least four locations in which multiple people had access to this, people that we don’t even know, they weren’t locked up.

“We’ve seen the picture of [Biden’s documents] in the garage [of his Wilmington, Delaware home]. How did they end up in the garage? You know, there are so many questions. Right now, if we could just have one set of questions answered, it would be, which countries were involved with these classified documents? Which countries did they pertain to?

“I think we’ve made the case as to why we’re asking the question because the Bidens have received tens of millions of dollars from some of these corrupt countries, for reasons that no one knows well.”