By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Top aides of Joe Biden, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan and former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, have been interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Hur, who is probing the president’s handling of classified documents, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
Those who have been questioned about how government documents came to be stored in a think tank office set up for Biden after his vice presidency and in his Delaware home include officials who worked with him both at the tail end of his tenure as vice president and now, the newspaper said.
Other than Sullivan and Klain, prosecutors have also spoken to Steve Ricchetti, a top White House aide; Secretary of State Antony Blinken; and Michael Carpenter, the former managing director of the Penn Biden Center, where some documents were found, the report added, citing people familiar with the case. Blinken’s interview was reported earlier this week by ABC News.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in January named Hur as special counsel to probe the improper storage of classified documents at Democrat Biden’s home and former office.
A wider-ranging inquiry into handling of classified documents has also been directed at Biden’s main potential rival for the 2024 elections, former President Donald Trump, who has been indicted in his case.
Trump, a Republican, also faces three separate indictments related to hush payments allegedly made to a porn star and efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 elections.
Earlier on Thursday, Republicans leading an impeachment inquiry of Biden detailed foreign payments to members of his family in their first hearing, but did not provide evidence that the Democratic president had personally benefited.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Costas Pitas; Editing by Leslie Adler and Lincoln Feast.)
