US President Joe Biden’s aides found a fresh batch of classified government records in second place, in a growing political embarrassment for the White House.
The first cache was found in a private office in Washington DC that Mr. Biden used after his vice presidency.
The matter is under review by the US Department of Justice.
Former President Donald Trump is facing a criminal investigation for alleged mishandling of classified files.
It was not yet clear Wednesday when or where the additional tranche of the Biden aide’s files was found.
The original batch of about 10 documents was discovered in November at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank near the White House, but only came to light this week.
These papers are said to include US intelligence memos and briefing materials related to Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom.
They refer to his time as vice president under President Barack Obama, but it is not clear why they appeared in a private office that he subsequently began using.
Access to classified documents is limited by law to people with special authorization and there are rules on how they are stored and preserved.
All White House records, even classified, must be turned over to the U.S. National Archives after the end of an administration in office.
The White House has yet to comment on the newly discovered batch. However, the finding was confirmed by BBC US partner CBS and other US media.
During her daily press briefing on Wednesday, Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer questions about the first cache of files.
“This is under review by the Department of Justice,” she said. “I’m not going beyond what the president shared yesterday.”
She was pressed on why it took two months to make the news public and declined to say when Mr. Biden was informed about it. The discovery occurred just days before the midterm congressional elections.
Watch: White House says Biden not aware of classified documents
Mr. Biden said Tuesday that he was “surprised” when he found out and that he was “cooperative” with the Justice Department’s review.
But the discovery of another batch of classified documents in a second place raises the possibility that this story is not one of isolated carelessness on the part of Joe Biden and his team, but rather something more systemic. It also increases the chances that this is not the last new revelation of document mishandling.
It’s an iron rule of presidential scandals that bad news that trickles over an extended period of time is far more politically damaging than one-time revelations, no matter how bad they are.
There have been several days of trickling revelations about the document’s history, and it is already distracting from the issues that Mr. Biden wants to focus on, such as lowering inflation levels and Republican efforts to introduce abortion restrictions in the House of Representatives.
The controversy also comes as the Democratic president is being investigated by a new Republican majority in the US House of Representatives.
“Now that Democrats no longer have one party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, said Wednesday.
The committee launched an investigation into the president and his family, including a request for the White House to hand over documents and communications related to the classified files.
See: Trump supporters upset with FBI search
At the moment, the story is an embarrassment for Mr. Biden. If it does, it could have a more corrosive effect on his presidency.
The White House said Mr. Biden’s lawyers alerted the archives as soon as they recovered the classified materials at the think tank, and the agency withdrew them the next morning.
Last August, FBI agents searched the Florida home of Mr. Biden’s predecessor and seized more than 10,000 files that Mr. Trump had not turned over to the National Archives.
The Justice Department had issued a subpoena for the return of the sensitive files before the FBI showed up at Mar-a-Lago.
More than 300 documents with classified markings, including 18 marked Top Secret, were recovered by federal agents from the golf club in Palm Beach.
Mr. Trump did not give a reason for explaining their presence there, but said he has the power as president to declassify them, a claim that has been challenged by legal experts.
Biden files timeline
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