It wasn't an "accident" that classified documents turned up at President Joe Biden's former Washington, D.C., think-tank office, as he and his staff had "decades of experience" in handling such items, Fred Fleitz, a former chief of staff at the National Security Council and ex-CIA analyst, told Newsmax on Wednesday.
"I just don't believe that this was an accident," Fleitz, now a Newsmax contributor, said on "Wake Up America." "This was an effort by Biden and his staff to squirrel away classified documents for Biden to use in his memoirs. It also could be business [or] personal purposes."
Biden on Tuesday said he was surprised when government documents were found by his attorneys at the Penn Biden Center, where Biden kept an office after leaving the vice presidency in 2017 until just before launching his presidential campaign in 2019.
The documents were discovered on Nov. 2, just days before the midterm election, but the news did not break about them until this week.
Biden also on Tuesday said his attorneys "did what they should have done" when they immediately called the National Archives to report the discovery.
However, reports have also indicated that the documents included information concerning Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Iran, and Fleitz said he finds the Ukraine connection particularly worrisome.
"Keep in mind that Hunter Biden made $11 million between 2013 and 2018 in his business to Ukraine and China," said Fleitz.
Fleitz also commented on the timing of the leaks concerning the documents, considering that they were discovered before the midterm elections.
"I think it's probably likely that if this was to the disadvantage of Republicans, careerists within the FBI and the Justice Department would have leaked it immediately," said Fleitz. "But leaks like this don't seem to come the Republicans' way. That's just the bias of the federal workforce."
Fleitz also on Wednesday said there should be "much more" outrage concerning reports of Chinese funding for the Penn Biden Center.
"I don't know if you remember 10 years ago, the Brookings Foundation got in a lot of trouble because it took $14 million in foreign donations from Qatar," said Fleitz. "The Penn Biden center takes $54 million in donations from China, and the media doesn't care."
A report last year in The New York Post said the center had opened after accepting $54 million in donations from China, a claim the University of Pennsylvania denied.
"The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center," university spokesman Stephen MacCarthy said at the time.
Meanwhile, Fleitz said he also finds the timing of the news about the documents to have been leaked "on purpose" while Biden is in Mexico for meetings.
"I think it probably was on purpose so the president wouldn't be available for the press to go after him," he said. "I think there's also a relationship with the new Republican Congress. They're worrying about subpoenas and investigations. Frankly, I'm glad we have a new Republican House so we can look into things like that."
Fleitz further pointed out that it's not yet known how many documents were discovered, even though a White House source said about 10 items were found and turned over.
"We don't know how many documents there were," he said. "We don't know how sensitive they were. We just have one anonymous White House source telling us it's a small number of maybe about 10. I'm skeptical about that."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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