john berman. this is cnn tonight. our headline, several classified documents from president joe biden s time as vice president discovered in a private office. he periodically used it in washington. they tell cnn a fewer than a dozen documents were found by biden s own people. his lawyer say they found him, some with the sensitive department designation. they found them on november 2nd. this is a notify the national archive immediately. they took possession of than the next morning. the president ignored, showed questions in mexico from corners tonight. now, there are questions tonight about how the documents got there. who knew they were there, what exactly they contain. the u.s. attorney in chicago who is a trump appointee there are important distinctions between this and the swirl of controversy around donald trump in the documents at mar-a-lago. biden s lawyer said immediately turn over documents and cooperated as soon as they found them. it took several asks, subpoenas
he claims he doesn t even know what the documents are today. so, i think what will happen here because the republicans are so good i making mountains out of molehills, they will make a mountain out of this. it s not gonna go away. it s not gonna change his situation at all. david gergen, to you here. in terms of how the current white house has handled us they told the national archive as soon as they were there. what is your assessment here? well, they didn t go public with it. it s all going to be tried first. as the investigation goes on and we get more facts, clearly they should have disclosed this when they first found out. they did the right thing by
votes. instead of working it out behind closed doors. so, a bit of inconsistency there. i m curious to see if you see someone committees. where do you put somebody who is under an scc investigation. this is the speaker of the house, we do not have a political capital shown to show that he is he speaker of the house. anderson from who has the power in that caucus, that is been made clear of the last couple of days. i don t think it ll behave the same way in the caucus. he is in uncharted water. and the case of george santos, who was in the george santos caucus who is rooting for the sky? i would any republican i know it s very thin margins but maybe you can spare the one vote did not have the guy lie. the answer is, if he wasn t a district public he d be gone.
are important distinctions between this and the swirl of controversy around donald trump in the documents at mar-a-lago. biden s lawyer said immediately turn over documents and cooperated as soon as they found them. it took several asks, subpoenas to get the search warrant. in that case, there was also an investigation of possible obstruction. the documents found in biden s office, fewer than a dozen. the ones found in mar-a-lago are in the hundreds. there was also a legal side and of course the political. everybody who watched the chaos in congress this past week knows that there is a new republican majority in the house with the gavel, new committee chairs. they are hungry for investigations. this could be the top of their list. now all of this against the backdrop of joe biden. cnn is reporting that he is getting ready to run again. i wanna bring in evan perez and sara murray. evan, you have the reporting on these documents.
this new congress. as you have an opportunity now you have an opportunity to investigate this. what about the timing of this? if biden s lawyers discovered them on november 2nd. that was before the midterm election. mariano hearing about this now. that s a question we certainly have. we don t know why this took so long to come out. we certainly know that the national archives, but they did after reviewing the situation was decide to make a referral to the justice department for them to do something similar to how they handle the mar-a-lago situation. the question now, is what happens next? after this, review after the investigation they asked for more information? they have to do interviews to see who handled these documents? remember they ve been sitting