The US National Archives on Thursday (26) asked former presidents and vice presidents of the country to review their belongings in search of possible classified documents, revealed CNN.
The request from the body responsible for handling this type of material comes days after a series of revelations show that the current president, Joe Biden, and former vice president Mike Pence had confidential files in their homes and offices that could not be with them. .
The request from the National Archives was addressed to representatives of former presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan —the last two already dead— and former vice presidents Pence, Biden, Dick Cheney, Al Gore and Dan Quayle.
In the letter, the body reminds politicians of the obligation to respect the law on presidential records, known by the acronym PRA and established in the 1970s, according to which acting presidents are responsible for the custody and handling of documents. Once they leave office, however, all this material must be sent to the Archives, which are responsible for managing it.
“The responsibility to respect the PRA does not change with the end of a presidential administration,” reads an excerpt from the letter sent to former US leaders. “Thus, we ask that they conduct a search for any documents that are not with the Archives and relate to their administrations.”
Over the past few weeks, the White House has reported that documents identified as classified have been discovered in Biden’s private office. The material is related to the time when the current president was Obama’s vice president, from 2009 to 2017.
Then, a new batch of similar material was discovered at the Democrat’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, adding to the criticism. A special prosecutor was then assigned to investigate the case, a common measure in politically sensitive episodes like this one.
Already last Tuesday (24), a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence, quoted as a Republican pre-candidate for the White House for the next election in 2024, claimed to have discovered about a dozen secret files in the house. him in Carmel, Indiana, and turned them over to the FBI, the American federal police.
The cases draw comparisons with that of former President Trump, who also stored confidential government documents on private property when he left power after being defeated by Biden. He is the subject of a criminal investigation for this.
Several hundred classified government documents, along with thousands of other unclassified papers and photos, ended up at his Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, after he left the White House.
Some were in boxes in a locked storage closet, and the FBI found others in Trump’s office, including on his desk, according to court documents.
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