US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump are just the latest in a four-decade-long chain of recent presidents who have mishandled classified documents during their tenure, New York Post has reported.
Every US administration since President Ronald Reagan has in some form fumbled federal procedure when managing top-secret records, the report said on Wednesday, citing the testimony of National Archives officials in a closed-door hearing before a congressional committee in March.
Earlier this year, a small number of documents with classified markings were found at Biden’s office in Washington, D.C. and his residence in Delaware.
Last year, the FBI seized a trove of documents, some of which were marked as highly classified, from Trump’s estate in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
Records become easily lost or mingled with non-classified documents because the White House treats various offices as “open storage” to which multiple individuals have access and the ability to move papers in and out, William Bosanko, the chief operating officer of the National Archives, was quoted by the report as saying.
U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner noted that “the handling and mishandling of classified documents are a problem that stretches beyond the Oval Office.”
“We need a better way for elected officials who are leaving office — in both the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch — to properly return classified material and protect the integrity of our national security,” he added.
