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How a Penn think tank is connected to DOJ review of Biden’s classified documents

About 10 documents were found in a box in a locked, private office closet as Biden’s personal attorneys were packing files in a University of Pennsylvania-affiliated research center.

University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann (left) talks with former Vice President Joe Biden at the university's Irvine Auditorium in Philadelphia in February 2019. Biden was the Benjamin Franklin presidential practice professor at Penn.
University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann (left) talks with former Vice President Joe Biden at the university's Irvine Auditorium in Philadelphia in February 2019. Biden was the Benjamin Franklin presidential practice professor at Penn.Read moreTIM TAI / Staff Photographer

The Department of Justice is reviewing a group of classified documents from President Joe Biden’s vice presidential era found in November at a University of Pennsylvania-affiliated think tank and Biden’s former office space.

On Monday, Biden’s attorney, Richard Sauber, said in a statement that a “small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered in a locked closet at the Washington, D.C., center on Nov. 2 as the president’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices.

The White House Counsel office was immediately notified, and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) took custody of the papers the next day, Sauber said.

» READ MORE: Penn has significant ties to Joe Biden. What might that mean during his presidency?

What happens next, and how is the University of Pennsylvania connected? Here’s what we know.

How were the classified documents found, and what was in them?

About 10 documents were found Nov. 2 in a box in a locked, private office closet as Biden’s personal attorneys were packing files in the Penn Biden Center offices, located about a mile from the White House, CBS News first reported.

“Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in possession of the Archives,” Sauber said.

According to CNN, the materials included briefings about Iran, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom, dated between 2013 and 2016. Some files were reportedly designated as “sensitive compartmented information,” used for top-secret information obtained from intelligence sources. A source told CBS that the documents do not contain nuclear secrets.

However, CNN reported, Biden and his legal team aren’t aware of what’s in the documents, saying the president’s lawyers did not review the files to avoid the appearance of impropriety before turning them over to the National Archives.

What is the Penn Biden Center, and how is it connected to the University of Pennsylvania?

The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement is a University of Pennsylvania research facility in Washington, D.C. It was created in 2018 as part of the school’s global outreach initiatives, hosting political science courses, employing interns, and holding events on foreign policy. According to the center’s website, it is a unit “completely independent” of the Biden administration.

Biden kept an office in the center at the foot of Capitol Hill after he left his vice presidency in 2017, which he used “periodically” until he launched his 2020 campaign, Sauber said in Monday’s statement.

During that time, Biden was also appointed an honorary professor and paid speaker at Penn, where he collected more than $900,000. He took an unpaid leave of absence from the university in 2019 when he announced his campaign.

» READ MORE: Penn has paid Joe Biden more than $900K since he left the White House. What did he do to earn the money?

Sitting officials in the Biden administration have also been linked to the Penn Biden Center, including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who served as the group’s managing director in 2018. Steve Richetti, a top White House aide to Biden, was the center’s managing director in 2019.

After Biden took a leave of absence, Penn community members called on the university to expand the center into a formal space for students interested in public policy careers, the Daily Pennsylvanian reported.

A University of Pennsylvania spokesperson did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

Will there be an investigation?

Attorney General Merrick Garland has asked Chicago-based U.S. Attorney John Lausch Jr. — a Trump appointee — to lead the preliminary investigation into the documents. Once Lausch submits that report, Garland will determine whether further investigation, including special counsel, is necessary. The FBI is also involved in the review, according to CBS.

Sauber has said the White House is “cooperating” with the Justice Department. He also noted that the documents “were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives.”

Under the Presidential Records Act, official files belonging to the president and vice president must be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their term, and knowingly removing classified documents with the intent to retain them is illegal.

What are lawmakers saying?

The discovery comes as special counsel Jack Smith is investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of at least 325 classified files found at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

In that matter, the FBI had to obtain a search warrant to retrieve the documents from Trump’s estate, and NARA had requested for months the return of about two dozen boxes of official records from the former president. When federal investigators searched the resort in August, they reportedly found additional classified materials, including information on other nations’ nuclear capabilities.

In Biden’s case, the president’s legal team says it surrendered the documents as soon as they were discovered in the office, have been cooperating with authorities, and that the unearthed records were never requested by NARA.

» READ MORE: A side-by-side look at the Trump, Biden classified documents

But while the volume and security levels of the files — as well as how they’ve been handled after their discovery — has differed, Republican lawmakers and Trump himself have been quick to draw parallels between the two.

“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump posted to his social media platform, Truth Social, Monday.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN on Monday the news about Biden’s documents proved the investigation into Trump was politically motivated. “I think it goes to prove what they tried to do to President Trump, [they] overplayed their hand on that,” he said.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio questioned why the public wasn’t told earlier of the discovery — made days before the midterm elections.

“They certainly knew about the raid on Mar-a-Lago 91 days before this election, but [it would have been] nice if on Nov. 2, the country would have known that there were classified documents at the Biden Center,” Jordan told the Associated Press.

In a statement, House Oversight Committee’s ranking member, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said that attorneys for the president “appear to have taken immediate and proper action” to notify the National Archives. “I have confidence that the Attorney General took the appropriate steps to ensure the careful review of the circumstances surrounding the possession and discovery of these documents and make an impartial decision about any further action that may be needed,” he wrote.

“From a political perspective, this is actually pretty bad,” former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who served on the Jan. 6 House select committee investigating Trump, told CNN. “Not just for the president, but really for the idea of getting justice through the political system.”