43% of Americans say Biden 'probably deliberately kept' docs hidden
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Of the 1,500 participants who partook in the poll, 42% argue that "the story has been overblown" and a whopping 65% are in favor of the FBI searching all of the president's properties.
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US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, DC, in January 2023 (AFP)
A Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll commissioned by US weekly Newsweek shows that 43% of US citizens believe that US President Joe Biden and/or his staff "probably deliberately kept" the classified documents at his home and former office.
On the other hand, 34% expressed that they were "probably mistakenly" kept and 23% said they were undecided. 42% of the 1,500 participants who partook in the poll argue that "the story has been overblown" and a whopping 65% were in favor of the FBI searching all of the president's properties.
On January 9, Biden's lawyers claimed to have stumbled upon 10 classified documents belonging to matters of Ukraine, Iran, and the UK located in his think-tank's office, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which led to the start of the FBI's search campaign.
Several other classified documents have been found at Biden's personal home in Wilmington, Delaware, and the DoJ is looking into how these classified documents which go back to his term as vice president ended up in his office and home where they are not authorized and allowed to be maintained and stored.
Read next: Pence on classified documents: 'Mistakes were made, I am responsible'
'No regrets'
The findings have drawn comparisons to the FBI's August 2022 raid on Trump's Mar-a-logo residence in Florida, in which more than 300 classified documents were recovered that were once in the former US President's possession. Trump said he wondered when US authorities would raid Biden's home.
Biden's lawyer, Bob Bauer, announced on February 1 that the FBI searched, on Wednesday, the president's beach house in Delaware as part of what has been considered the latest stage of an operation seeking to uncover improperly stored classified documents.
Moreover, in his statement, Biden's attorney said that the US Justice Department launched the latest search without "advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate."
With all that said, Biden says he has "no regrets" over the mishandling of classified records by saying "We found a handful of documents that were filed in the wrong place, we immediately turned them over to the [National] Archives and Justice Department,"
As of January 22, the total number of known documents was 31.
