The National Archives recently released 74 pages of emails indicating that they had coordinated with the personal lawyers of Joe Biden in order to secretly access and retrieve classified materials from the Penn Biden Center prior to the 2022 midterm elections. This type of coordination between government institutions and private individuals is highly unusual, raising questions as to why it was done in such secrecy and which parties were ultimately responsible.
According to the emails, Gary Stern, a lawyer for the National Archives, arranged for a “US Government van” to pick up the materials on November 7th – just days prior to the midterms. Not only this, but Bob Bauer and Pat Moore – both representing Biden – were instructed by Stern to make sure any documents located in Boston remained secure and stored in a locked space. The reason for these secretive proceedings has yet to be revealed.
What is even more disconcerting is that this information only came out after House oversight Chair James Comer was not supplied with all pertinent documents by the Archives before January 24th’s deadline. Comer believes that either the White House or Department of Justice had ordered that this data be hidden from public view until after the election results had been announced.
The lack of transparency and deceptive communication surrounding this matter may lead some people to believe that those involved sought deliberately sought to keep information hidden from the public in order to protect certain interests related to the Biden administration. While this hasn’t been proven beyond a shadow of doubt, it also hasn’t been disproven, and nobody has yet provided an adequate explanation as to why such lengths were taken nor what documents were being retrieved.