CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale said Friday on CNN’s “News Central” that President Joe Biden made three false claims at his Thursday press conference held after Special Counsel Robert Hur released his report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.
Biden said, “All the stuff that was in my home was in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked.”
Dale said, “Just not true, John. This report from the special counsel includes photos. Those photos include shots of a box just sitting in President Biden’s Delaware garage. The special counsel described it as a badly damaged box sitting amid household detritus. So there was some material that was in cabinets, locked or lockable as the president said, but all of it certainly not. And that open, unsealed damaged box included, according to the special counsel, highly sensitive top secret material about the war in Afghanistan.”
Biden said, “None of it was high classified, didn’t have that red stuff around the corner.”
Dale said, “That claim that he didn’t have any material that was quote, unquote, ‘high classified’ is also not true, John. The special counsel’s report says that the president possessed multiple highly classified documents that were indeed marked as being highly classified documents, including some marked as Top Secret/SCI, Sensitive Compartmented Information. That is a very high level of classification. Whatever coloring these documents had, the special counsel says they were clearly marked as highly classified.”
Biden said, “I did not share classified information with my ghostwriter.”
Dale said, “So he is entitled to say he didn’t do it, he can defend himself. But he also said the special counsel didn’t say that he did share that classified info with the ghostwriter. Except, John, the special counsel did say that explicitly. Hur wrote, quote, ‘Mr. Biden shared information, including some classified information from those notebooks with his ghostwriter.’ So there it is in black and white.”
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