Claims misrepresent 1,850 boxes of Biden documents at Delaware university
CLAIM: President Joe Biden withheld 1,850 boxes of classified documents from his time as vice president.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The National Archives and Records Administration says the boxes of files referenced in that figure are actually Biden’s Senate papers, which are housed at the University of Delaware. The federal agency told The Associated Press the files of Congress members are considered their personal property and are not subject to the same restrictions as presidential records, which are considered government property. While the FBI has searched the Delaware university records as part of a larger search for classified documents, there is no evidence they were withheld from authorities in any way.
THE FACTS: As former President Donald Trump faces federal charges of illegally hoarding White House documents, he has repeatedly drawn comparisons to 1,850 boxes of government records kept by President Joe Biden as proof he’s being unfairly persecuted.
“By the way, Biden’s got 1,850 boxes,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Georgia over the weekend. “He’s fighting them on the boxes. He doesn’t want to give the boxes and then they say, ‘Trump is obstructioning’.”
On social media, supporters have echoed the figure, suggesting Biden has been fighting the release of thousands of boxes of highly sensitive government documents dating from his time as vice president under former President Barack Obama.
“Joe Biden was withholding 1,850 boxes of classified documents from when he served as VP with no declassification authority,” reads one widely shared post on Facebook that lists the University of Delaware and other places where the allegedly sensitive documents were stored.
A popular tweet also compared the allegations against Trump to Biden’s “1800+ boxes of documents.”
But the 1,850 boxes referred to in these claims are being falsely conflated with classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president that have been found in other locations, such as one of his former offices in Washington and his Delaware home.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-chec...utm_id=Taboola