According to reports, federal investigators have talked to around 100 witnesses in their criminal probe into how President Biden handled classified information when he was vice president under the Obama government and when he was a U.S. Senator for Delaware.
ABC News said that most of the interviews were with former Biden staffers and military staffers who talked about how the information was handled. The witnesses were interviewed as recently as this past week, and some of them were asked to come back for more questions, the story said.
The investigation, headed by Special Counsel Robert Hur, a U.S. attorney from the Trump administration, has “apparently uncovered occurrences of carelessness throughout Biden’s vice presidency,” according to the report. This wording is similar to that which was used when the FBI decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her careless handling of classified documents during the presidential election of 2016.
According to the study, it seems from the testimony of the witnesses that Biden’s “unauthorized removal of classified materials from his office during his 2017 White House departure was more likely an error than a criminal crime.”
The report did say that the probe is still going on and that the special counsel hasn’t decided if Biden is going to be charged.
Investigators are said to have talked to Antony Blinken, who was Biden’s assistant and is now Secretary of State.
The study also said:
“Sources say that investigators have shown witnesses email lines that go back at least to 2010 and asked them to explain what was going on in those conversations. Sources say that witnesses have also been asked about the use of safes and closets. … Sources say that investigators are asking witnesses, mainly former military aides, very specific questions about how secret materials are handled internally. They seem to be trying to figure out how the vice president got, read, and threw away classified briefing papers.”
It has already been said that some of the papers that authorities found in Biden’s house were from when he was in the U.S. Senate.
The investigation into Biden by the special counsel is similar to and different from the probe into how former President Trump handled sensitive information.
When secret information was found in Biden’s office and home, investigators were called, the papers were found, and Biden seems to have cooperated with the investigation. Trump, on the other hand, is accused of blocking his own probe.