Experts say new tranche of emails released by National Archives show U.S. information put at security risk.
Briefing materials for President Barack Obama, subjects and times for White House Situation Room meetings and discussions about sensitive conversations with foreign leaders and even fallout from leaked National Security Agency intercepts were forwarded to Joe Biden’s private pseudonymous email accounts when he was vice president, according to a new tranche of documents turned over to Just the News by the National Archives.
Security experts and lawmakers, who reviewed the records, said they were disturbed by the nonchalant transmission of sensitive government information to Biden’s insecure private email accounts and believed it put national security at risk.
“The new set of emails from Joe Biden’s time as Vice President are very troubling and are more evidence that Biden believed he did not have to abide by classification and document handling regulations,” former CIA analyst and former Trump National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Just the News.
Several hundred pages of emails from 2011 to 2015 were released to Just the News and its public interest law firm partner the Southeastern Legal Foundation as part on an ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation.
They build on prior evidence that then-Vice President Biden was using the pseudonymous accounts for sensitive discussions with close advisors about official business ranging from domestic politics to sensitive foreign policy matters.
Just the News has not been able yet to determine if any of them were “classified,” in part because many documents were redacted or withheld in their entirety except for subject line. For instance, one fully withheld email from January 19, 2015, includes the subject “The President’s Briefing Materials.”
File: The Presidents Briefing Materials.pdf
Applicable federal regulations aren’t limited to classified material, and instead strictly limit federal employees’ use of commercial email to conduct government business.
As for the contents, each federal agency has its own definition of “sensitive.” The U.S. Air Force, for example calls it “controlled unclassified information” in a memo about email, while the U.S. Department of Labor is even more restrictive, directing federal employees to “NOT use your personal email or social media accounts for official matters. This raises record-keeping issues and potentially puts confidential information at risk.”
By Steven Richards and John Solomon
