Kathy Chung, Joe Biden’s former executive assistant, has agreed to sit down with the House Oversight Committee for an interview about the handling of classified documents. Chung is one of the staffers who packed up Biden’s belongings at the end of his term as vice president. She is scheduled to talk to the committee on April 4.
The Chairman of the committee, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), requested the interview last month.
“The Committee believes your proximity to Vice President Biden and role as handler of his personal matters gave you access not only to classified material he maintained after leaving the White House, but also to the Biden family’s business schemes,” Comer said in a letter dated Feb 4.
Biden has thrown Chung and others under the bus for their role in packing boxes of his personal belongings as he left office. He essentially said that they just didn’t do the job properly. In February during an interview with PBS host Judy Woodruff, he said they were not as thorough as they should have been.
“As they packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should have been done to go thoroughly through every single piece of literature that’s there,” Mr. Biden said to PBS’s Judy Woodruff in an interview broadcast Wednesday night.
That sounds like Biden’s rendition of the expression that it’s hard to get good help these days, doesn’t it? When all else fails, blame the staff. You notice he didn’t offer an explanation of why he had the documents in his office in the first place. He just blamed Chung and the lower-level staff she had helping her box up his belongings. The question that needs to be answered is what exactly were the documents and why did he take them from a secured location?
Chung has already been interviewed by the Justice Department. DOJ is investigating whether or not Biden or anyone around him illegally mishandled classified documents. Chung will be interviewed by committee staff behind closed doors. Members of the committee will be able to ask questions. One-hour blocks of questioning will alternate between Republicans and Democrats.
Biden’s explanations of the presence of classified documents in his home and office have been less than believable. He referred to them as stray papers that just turned up. He also claims he hasn’t asked questions about the documents found or shown any curiosity about why they were discovered in the first place. If lawyers and FBI agents found classified and secret documents and records in your possession, would you ask what they found and be curious as to their importance? C’mon, man. If nothing else, that information could be an indication of exactly how much of a security breach it was. Biden is not a good liar, which is odd, given how much he does. It sounds like Chung was doing her job.
According to a person familiar with the matter, Chung has turned over records related to the movement of documents from the White House to the Penn Biden Center, where Biden kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The person was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive transfer of documents.
The committee had made a wide-ranging document request, including for Chung’s communications with the Biden family dating back more than 10 years.
One result of the discovery of classified documents held by Trump, Biden, and Pence is exposing how common it is that elected officials walk off with secret documents and have them in their possession.
The discoveries that Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence were in possession of classified documents over the last year have brought new scrutiny to the rules around classified information and laid bare an uncomfortable truth: Policies meant to control the handling of the nation’s secrets are haphazardly enforced among top officials and rely almost wholly on good faith.
It’s also become increasingly common for presidents, vice presidents and even members of Congress to retain sensitive documents after leaving office, according to the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
“The archivist told us that there were 80 members of Congress” who turned out to have classified material in their records, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., told reporters Wednesday about a briefing he received from the National Archives. “How that happens is beyond me.”
If the National Archives knows about 80 members of Congress mishandling classified documents, will there be FBI raids on their homes and offices to make sure there are no more documents in their possession? Will they be given the Trump treatment or the Biden and Pence treatment? We know the answer to that.
Why has the National Archives been silent up until now on the abuse of classified documents? Granted, there is an excessive amount of documents that hold classified status, but it’s a national security risk for them to be scattered about wily-nily in offices. Classified and top-secret means that they should not be out in the open anywhere.
Good luck to Kathy Chung. It’s been reported the subject matter of the documents Biden had had to do with Ukraine and Iran. That’s not a coincidence. It sounds like we may find Hunter Biden at the bottom of this story. Shocking, I know.
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