Biden Addresses Classified Docs Drama: They Picked Up Things ‘From 1974 and Stray Papers’

President Joe Biden brushed off probes into his classified document investigation during a new interview, saying the FBI picked up things “from 1974 and stray papers.”

In an exclusive interview after the State of the Union, the president sat down with PBS’s Judy Woodruff to discuss everything from the speech, the Chinese spy balloon, and the classified documents found at his home and offices. Last month, the FBI spent 13 hours searching Biden’s Wilmington, DE home. It was the fourth instance where classified documents were found at one of Biden’s homes or offices. Some of the documents recovered dated back to Biden’s time as a Senator and Vice President.

During the interview on PBS, Biden brushed off the issue, saying he’s been advised not to speak on the matter.

“It’s clear there’s a difference between the way you’ve handled this and former President (Donald) Trump,” Woodruff said. “You’ve cooperated with the archives, with the FBI. But I want to ask you about, quickly about what you said last September. You said just possessing classified documents is, you said, ‘totally irresponsible.’ So what was totally irresponsible about the fact that you had some?”

“They’ve informed me not to speak to this issue — to any way, try to prejudice the investigation that’s going on,” Biden said. “But what I was talking about was what was laid out. All these documents were top secret, code word, and all the rest. I’m not at liberty, and I’m not even sure — I made voluntarily — no one has had to threaten to do anything. Voluntarily open every single aperture I have with the house, offices, everything, for them to come and look and spend hours searching my home — invited them.”

“And the best of my knowledge, the kinds of things they picked up are things that are from 1974 and stray papers, there may be something else, I don’t know,” Biden said.

“But one of the things that happened is that what was not done well is as they packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should have been done to go thoroughly through every single piece of literature that’s there. But, I just let the investigation have, you know, decide what’s going on and we’ll see what happens,” he concluded.

Watch above via PBS NewsHour.