Biden's classified records mistakes are serious and so far largely unexplained

• The closet where Biden's lawyers found classified documents was inside of a shared "general suite."
• Who had access to the closet and how the sensitive documents wound up there remains unknown.

In September, President Joe Biden was asked about a photograph of more than 100 classified documents discovered by the FBI near Donald Trump's residence in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago. Biden said he was shocked. He wondered "how that could possibly happen, how anyone could be that irresponsible."

Less than eight weeks later, Biden's lawyers informed him that he had his own problem with classified papers turning up in a place where they were not supposed to be — inside a locked closet in an office at 101 Constitution Ave. NW, a short walk from the White House.

The documents had apparently been sitting there for years, inside the offices of the Penn Biden Center, a nonprofit think tank that Biden established with the University of Pennsylvania after leaving the vice presidency. Among several boxes of papers were reportedly 10 classified documents, which included briefing materials about Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom, along with unclassified documents that Biden was also supposed to have turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration. There were also personal Biden family documents in the closet, including arrangements for the funeral of Biden's son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015.

A second batch of classified documents was discovered by aides at a separate location Biden had used, NBC News reported on Wednesday.

The White House has said that the Penn Biden Center documents were discovered by chance, in the process of vacating the office, and that they notified the National Archives of the lapse immediately. Archives referred the matter to the Justice Department. Attorney General Merrick Garland reportedly asked the lead federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Illinois for a preliminary review, and must now decide whether and how to proceed. Intentionally storing classified material at an unauthorized location is a crime; Biden said he was "surprised" to learn there had been classified records at his private office.

The Justice Department's deliberations over 101 Constitution will run parallel with its criminal investigation of Trump's own classified fiasco at Mar-a-Lago, complicating efforts by Democrats to paint the mishandling of classified material in starkly moralistic terms. Politics aside, the Biden documents should matter for the same reasons as Trump's, although the details of the documents and their sensitivity are not yet fully known. Both cases will test Garland's zealous focus on "equal justice under law," whether the same rules actually apply to everyone.

"It's important," retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who led the N.S.A. and then the C.I.A. under President George W. Bush, told Insider via email. He expressed concern about the two-month delay between Biden's lawyers discovering the documents and the White House's public announcement. "But that said," he went on, "they're doing all the right things now."

Of course, as many have noted, there are significant differences between 101 Constitution and Mar-a-Lago. Trump repeatedly (and foolishly) tried to stonewall Archives and the FBI, which then discovered additional records in the August search; Biden's lawyers say they are cooperating. Glenn Gerstell, the N.S.A.'s former general counsel, noted two other differences to Insider: Trump appears to have stashed away a greater volume of documents, and the room in which he stored them appears to have been less secure. And let's not forget that Trump's successful 2016 presidential bid was premised in part on the claim that his opponent had been unforgivably and criminally negligent in the handling of classified material.

But the biggest difference is how much we know about Mar-a-Lago, thanks to months of litigation, compared to how little we know about 101 Constitution. The narrative outlined above — documents discovered by chance months ago, in a locked closet, to Biden's surprise, with immediate notification to Archives — comes to us exclusively from Biden's own attorneys and the White House. This is the same team that decided to withhold news of the discovery from the public for two months, a period that included the midterm elections and the naming of a special counsel for the Trump investigations. While they deserve credit for notifying Archives, the story they've constructed around the documents is, as one would expect, a very favorable one to Biden. It needs to be checked out.

For starters, why did Biden keep a trove of secret documents and personal mementos locked in a closet, inside of an office that he appears not to have used for at least two years? "He has not worked at Penn for several years, although the physical space is still there," said Ron Ozio, director of media relations for the University of Pennsylvania, by email. Ozio confirmed that the Penn Biden Center shared a "general suite" with another Penn entity that uses the same address. The Penn Biden Center also hosted regular "happy hour networking" events. These details complicate what Biden said yesterday, when he called the center "my office at the University of Pennsylvania … a secure office," which could be read as implying that the entire suite was for the exclusive use of Biden and his staff. And the fact that the move-out was being conducted by Biden's personal lawyers makes it harder to believe that no one had any inkling of the possibility that classified materials might turn up.

There are also many unanswered questions: Who had access to the closet? Who took the documents to 101 Constitution and under what circumstances? What secrets do these documents reveal and how damaging could they be? Given that the Justice Department is still weighing how to handle the matter, some reticence around these questions is understandable. But if Biden is going to call Trump "irresponsible," responsibility demands that he eventually produce some public answers.

"Politicians can make mistakes," Joel Brenner, the former inspector general of the NSA, told Insider via email. "Few of them are brought up, as intelligence professionals are, to respect the rules whether or not the rules are convenient or even stupid, as sometimes they are. If you have access to classified information, you can't just take it anywhere; you must keep it in an authorized safe. That said, people make mistakes. A classified document can get caught up in a pile of ordinary stuff. That has happened to me. Maybe it happened to Biden."