Biden news: President makes first response to classified papers trove as GOP accused Dems of hypocrisy

The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe Biden’s former institute, the White House said on Monday. CBS News was first to report the story.

Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on 2 November 2022, in a “locked closet” in the office, Mr Sauber said.

Mr Sauber said the attorneys immediately alerted the White House Counsel’s office, who notified the National Archives and Records Administration — which took custody of the documents the next day.

“Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” Sauber said.

“The White House is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice regarding the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records, including a small number of documents with classified markings,” says Richard Sauber, counsel to President Joe Biden.

Here’s our full report:

President Joe Biden spoke with Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Monday, a day after right-wing supporters of ousted ex-president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the presidsential palace, Supreme Court, and legislative body of Brazil.

It was a chaotic scene that lasted for several hours and ended in hundreds of arrests; all the while, the similarities to the US’s own January 6 attack on Congress were inescapable down to the attendance of a man dressed like the QAnon Shaman.

The White House confirmed the call Monday afternoon and promised more details later in the evening.

John Bowden has the latest from Washington, DC.

Lawmakers no longer have to walk through metal detectors before gaining access to the House floor. And any time they do vote, they will have to do so in person — no more voting by proxy from home.

Those are just some of the changes being made by the now GOP-led House that has chafed at some of the restrictions Democrats put in place as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

A look at some of the key changes Republicans are expected to adopt Monday that will affect floor proceedings and dictate their priorities in the 118th Congress.

Andrew Feinberg writes:

When President Joe Biden announced that the United States would begin expelling any migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who cross into the US illegally between ports of entry, he implicitly blamed the US Congress for contributing to the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

The influx has overwhelmed border towns in California, Texas and Arizona, and Mr Biden called out the refusal to update what he described as a “patchwork” of immigration laws which “simply doesn’t work as it should” and said the new programme he was ordering was just a stopgap.

“Until Congress passes ... a comprehensive immigration plan to fix the system completely, my administration is going to work to make things better at the border using the tools that we have available to us now,” Mr Biden said.

Read on:

One of the most important diplomatic decisions by President Joe Biden at the gathering this week of North American leaders might have been his choice of airport.

Biden arrived in Mexico City on Sunday evening via Mexico’s newest hub, the Felipe Angeles International Airport, a prized project by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The hub was christened last year with much fanfare, though it’s located more than an hour’s drive north of the city center, has few flights and until recently lacked consistent drinking water.

A conservative candidate loses re-election and attacks the integrity of the election system while refusing to fully concede defeat as many of the candidate’s supporters protest and storm the capital.

Owing to recent events, this timeline can now hold true for either Donald Trump or his far-right ally in South America, former Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro.

Josh Marcus reports.

Joe Biden was confronted by the governor of Texas on the tarmac on Sunday after the latter complained hours earlier that he had only been extended an invitation to meet him as an afterthought.

The moment occurred as Mr Biden touched down in the Lone Star State for a trip to the US-Mexico border, where he met with agents from US Customs and Border Protection as well as local elected leaders.

John Bowden reports.

An Illinois-based federal prosecutor has been tasked with investigating the presence of potentially classified documents found at a Washington, DC think tank by President Joe Biden’s personal attorneys.

In a statement, Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber said Mr Biden’s lawyers found the documents on 2 November as they were “packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center” — a think tank affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr Biden held an honourary professorship and where he “periodically” made use of an office from 2017 to 2020, when they discovered a folder which contained documents bearing classification markings.

Mr Sauber added that Mr Biden’s lawyers had immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration, which took possession of the documents and informed the Justice Department of what had transpired.

Andrew Feinberg reports.