Confidential documents at Joe Biden: what consequences for the President of the United States?

Ophélie Artaud 3:20 p.m., January 13, 2023

DECRYPTION

An embarrassing affair for the Democrats ... This Thursday, the White House announced that "a small number" of confidential documents, taken by Joe Biden when he was Vice President of the United States, were found in his residence privately owned in Wilmington, Delaware.

In the process, a special and independent prosecutor was appointed to investigate these cases.

For his part, the President of the United States claims to have acted "inadvertently".

But could these revelations have legal or political consequences for Joe Biden?

Joe Biden 'appears in good faith'

If the situation creates scandal across the Atlantic, it is because in the United States, a law dating from 1978 obliges presidents and vice-presidents to send all their working documents, emails or letters to the Archives. national.

There are also several levels of document classification, depending on their importance: "confidential", "secret" and "top secret".

For the moment, the documents found at Joe Biden would only be "confidential".

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Another important element: it was the White House itself which announced that it had found these documents and they were immediately handed over to the National Archives.

If we stick to these elements, there would therefore be little chance that the case would take a legal turn.

"For there to be legal proceedings, the prosecutor would have to be satisfied that there was a desire to hide these highly classified documents. All the documents were spotted at the same time, reported at the same time... It seems to good faith", explains the political scientist and specialist in the United States Nicole Bacharan in

Republicans take over

If Joe Biden should therefore not be attacked on the legal level, this could still have political consequences.

Especially since this case is reminiscent of another.

In 2021, former President Donald Trump left with several boxes of documents when he left the White House.

He then returned about fifteen at the start of 2022. Except that this time, most of the documents were classified “secret” or even “top secret”.

The luxurious residence of Donald Trump, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, was even searched last August.

26 archive boxes were then found.

Since then, the former president of the United States has responded, even speaking of a "witch hunt".

While an investigation is still ongoing, no charges have been brought against Donald Trump.

The fact that a similar situation affects the Democratic president therefore gives grain to grind to elected Republicans.

While Joe Biden is now in the minority in the House of Representatives, the new speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is also asking Congress to launch an investigation against the president.

This could have consequences for the political future of Joe Biden, who should soon announce his desire to seek a new mandate by presenting himself in the presidential elections of 2024.