Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) criticized the Biden administration over its handling of the discovery of classified documents from the president’s time as vice president and the revelation that some materials dated back to his time as a senator.
“The reality is, it’s not been handled well up to this point. And they need a course correction,” Heitkamp said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Department of Justice officials found more documents with classified markings in Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence during what his attorney’s called a “consensual” search on Friday. The search lasted about 13 hours and yielded the discovery of six more documents that had classified markings from Biden’s time in the Senate and as vice president.
That discovery came just days after Biden told reporters that there was “nothing there” when addressing a question about a Justice Department investigation into the matter. He downplayed the situation, saying on Thursday that “there’s no there there” and that he “has no regrets.”
Heitkamp, who lost her bid for reelection in 2018, also said Biden’s response to a question on the situation did not help.
“The worst thing the president could have said was ‘There’s no there there. I have no regrets,'” Heitkamp said.
“The easy answer was ‘Look, this obviously is something that should not have happened. I should not have had classified documents in my possession at at various levels. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, but I in no way did this intentionally,'” she suggested.