8:45 p.m. ET, February 8, 2024
Biden blames staff for handling of classified documents
From CNN's Nikki Carvajal
President Joe Biden.
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
President Joe Biden placed the blame for his handling of classified documents on his staff, saying he took responsibility for “not having seen exactly” what they were doing.
“I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing,” Biden said, when asked by a reporter if he took responsibility for being careless with classified material. “Things that appear in my garage, things that came out of my home, things that were moved -- not by me but my staff."
Biden was asked later what he would do differently and responded that what he should have done is “oversee the transfer of the material that was in my office – in my offices.”
“I should have done that,” he said. “If I go back, I didn't have the responsibility, that was – my staff was supposed to do that and they referenced that in the report. And my staff did not do it in a way that – for example, I didn't know how half the boxes got in my garage until I found out staff gathering them up, put them together and took them out of the garage of my home.”
He also drew a comparison with former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified material, saying his documents weren’t “out in like – in Mar Lago, in a public place where – and none of it was high classified, it didn't have any of that red stuff on it. You know what I mean? The red stuff around the corners? None of that.”
Special counsel Robert Hur found that Biden did not properly protect classified documents in a report released earlier Thursday but said that Biden should not be criminally charged.