Jean-Pierre said the search for classified documents was completed six times, only five more were found

Karine Jean-Pierre said six times last Thursday that the search for classified documents in Joe Biden’s personal possession was “complete” only for White House counsel Richard Stauber to find five more at the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, that night.

President Biden and his administration have been criticized for not immediately and publicly disclosing when classified materials were found, despite opportunities to do so and while facing questions about the matter.

Jean-Pierre, in particular, has been questioned in his daily press conferences about the lack of transparency. But she now faces questions about when she learned about the document discoveries and the information she delivered at her press conferences.

As White House press secretary, Jean-Pierre is the face of the administration. His briefings are meant to inform the public about the work of the Biden administration, but it is also a time for the administration to be held accountable, through questions from the media, for its actions.

The situation is fast becoming a crisis for the White House. House Republicans have launched a series of investigations, and the Justice Department has appointed special counsel to look into the matter. Even some Democrats have had trouble defending Biden, and Donald Trump, who is facing his own investigation into classified material he had at Mar-a-Lago, has accused everyone of double standards.

The White House counsel’s office said last week that after Biden’s personal lawyers discovered the first batch of classified documents when they shut down their DC think tank, a search for additional materials was conducted at his Wilmington homes and rehoboth.

“Attorneys completed that review last night,” Stauber said in a statement Thursday morning.

He announced that another classified document had been found in a room in Biden’s home in Wilmington.

In his Thursday afternoon briefing, Jean-Pierre said six times that the search for additional classified documents was over.

His statements on Thursday:

1. “After the search concluded last night, we issued a statement revealing the facts of that search.”
2. That quest was completed last night. And now this is in the hands of the Department of Justice.
3. On quest: ‘You should assume it’s completed, yes’.
4. They completed the search with the documents found last night.
5. “The search is clearly complete and we are therefore sharing the information with all of you.”
6. ‘Look, I can only refer you to what his team said: The search is complete. You have confidence in this process. And I’ll leave it there.

But Stauber, who has a security clearance, went to Biden’s Wilmington home that Thursday night and discovered five more classified documents in the paperwork there.

That discovery was not announced until Saturday morning.

“Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday night to facilitate the delivery of the document the President’s personal attorney found Wednesday to the Department of Justice,” Stauber said in a statement made two days after the discovery. of the documents.

“While I was transferring it to Justice Department officials with me, an additional five pages with classification marks were discovered among the material it contained, for a total of six pages. The Justice Department officials who were with me immediately took possession of them.

Nor did Jean-Pierre disclose the discovery of the documents when he informed the press on Friday, January 13, the day after they were found.

So when he confronted reporters again this week, he was asked if he knew about the documents during Friday’s briefing.

She said she shared what the White House counsel’s office had told her.

“I have communicated from this podium,” he replied at Tuesday’s press conference. ‘I was repeating what the [White House] the lawyer was sharing at the time.’

She was pressed again by CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, who asked if she knew about the five additional documents when she spoke to reporters on Friday afternoon.

“I literally just answered that question,” Jean-Pierre replied.

When Weijia said that he did not hear the answer, Jean-Pierre said that “you are not far away” from the reporter who asked.

Asked when the press office originally discovered that Biden had classified documents in his personal possession, Jean-Pierre told Weijia it was “when his team was doing a story.”

The CBS story on classified documents in Biden’s possession broke on January 9. The White House publicly acknowledged that Biden had the material after CBS published the article on him.

Jean-Pierre also snapped at a reporter who asked if Biden, while spending last weekend in Wilmington, had searched his home for any more classified documents.

‘Are you listening to the question you’re asking me?’ she asked in response.

In all, there have been four discoveries of classified materials: at the Penn-Biden Center, a think tank in Washington, DC; in Biden’s garage at his Wilmington, Del., home; a document discovered in his ‘personal library’ in the same house and then four more documents found in his house.

They all date back to Biden’s time as Barack Obama’s vice president, but the White House won’t answer what topics the materials cover.

The administration waited until January, until well after the November 8 midterm elections, to announce the documents found in Biden’s DC think tank on November 4, four days before voters were due to go to the polls. .

The attorney’s office then made two more announcements in the days that followed: about documents found in Biden’s garage at his Wilmington home, and then a third document found in a room in that home.

On Saturday, the administration announced that five more pages containing classified information were found at Biden’s home in Wilmington.