The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) announced it filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on Tuesday to determine how classified documents and other presidential records of the Obama-Biden administration were stored at the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C.
The FOIA requests were made with the Department of Justice and the National Archives after the White House issued a statement on Monday that both classified and unclassified White House records were discovered on Nov. 2, before the midterm elections, "when the president's personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC."
The Biden Center is a think tank funded by the University of Pennsylvania, which has received more than $60 million in donations from Chinese entities, of which some $22 million is anonymous.
The FOIA requests seek to gain answers to some vital questions, according to the NLPC, such as why was the discovery kept secret before the midterm elections and held for two months and why the DOJ hasn't searched the Biden Center to find out if other documents are stored there.
The NLPC also said it requests hope to gain answers to why the president's private lawyers are moving an academic office and why is the Biden Center relocating at all, when it still has a four- to five-year lease on the expensive 14,000-square-foot prime space.
The Biden Center opened its offices in February 2018, and Biden used it as an occasional office. It's also where Antony Blinken, now secretary of state, was the Biden Center’s executive director.
Biden received some $900,000 from the University of Pennsylvania for giving a few lectures before he announced he was running for the presidency in 2019, according to NLPC.
Biden later appointed as ambassador to Germany University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutman, who dodged questions about the source of the Chinese donations during her confirmation hearings, falsely saying that the Department of Education required that they be kept anonymous.
Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, said that "while the Justice Department has been relentless in going after former President Donald Trump for storing classified documents, they use kid gloves when it comes to Joe Biden."
NLPC Chair Peter Flaherty added that "it’s time that the House Oversight Committee, now chaired by Representative James Comer, conduct a full investigation of this matter, including the Chinese money connection to the Biden Center and Hunter Biden.”
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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