Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Alleged Cover-Up of Biden Classified Materials Housed at ‘Penn Biden Center’

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense for documents regarding a key Biden staffer allegedly involved in the handling of Joe Biden’s materials housed at Penn Biden Center (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:23-cv-03836)).

The lawsuit was filed over an October 18, 2023, request for:

Records and communications of Kathy Chung, Deputy Director of Protocol, Office of the Secretary of Defense, including emails, email chains, email attachments, text messages, voice recordings, correspondence, letters, logs, calendar entries, calendar meetings, memoranda, reports, regarding:

1. Communications with Dana Remus, email address: [email protected], Covington & Burling, LLP, Washington, DC, concerning the Penn Biden Center, Washington, DC, or any classified documents or materials at the Penn Biden Center.

2. Communications with any person using the email domain @who.eop.gov regarding classified documents, documents, or materials at the Penn Biden Center.

3. Communications with any employee using the email domain @dod.mil regarding classified documents, documents, or materials at the Penn Biden Center.

In a May 5, 2023, letter Chairman James Comer of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability wrote to former Assistant to the President and White House Counsel to President Biden Dana Remus (now a partner at the Washington law firm Covington & Burling) in the course of the Committee’s ongoing investigation of President Biden’s “mishandling of highly classified documents:”

The Committee has obtained information that contradicts important details from the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s statements about the discovery of documents at the Penn Biden Center, including the location and security of the classified documents. The Committee has learned that you were a central figure in the early stages of coordinating the packing and moving of boxes that were later found to contain classified materials. Following a recent transcribed interview with Ms. Kathy Chung – the President’s former assistant from when he was Vice President and subsequent employee of then-former Vice President Biden’s company, Celtic Capri [now Deputy Director of Protocol, Office of the Secretary of Defense] – the Committee has identified you as a witness with potentially unique knowledge about this matter and requests information from you.

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Specifically, the Committee seeks clarification regarding the timeline of events prior to November 2, 022 (the day, according to the White House and the President Biden’s personal attorney, documents were discovered at Penn Biden Center), the security of the documents in the Penn Biden Center before and after Ms. Chung packed them, and President Biden’s history of potentially mishandling classified material.

In a subsequent, October 11, 2023, letter to Remus’ White House successor, Edward Siskel, Chairman Comer stated:

In January 2023, President Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, released a statement that included a timeline of events that inexplicably began on November 2, 2022, with the “unexpected[] discover[y]” of Obama-Biden records at Penn Biden Center. President Biden’s timeline was incomplete and misleading. It omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating among multiple White House officials, Ms. Chung, Penn Biden Center employees, and President Biden’s personal attorneys to retrieve the boxes containing classified materials. The timeline also omitted multiple visits from at least five White House employees, including Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams, Annie Tomasini, and an unknown staffer. There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials.

“While the Biden administration was scheming to jail former President Trump over a document dispute, Biden operatives were desperately trying to cover up Biden’s own and more significant document scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And the cover-up continues with yet another Biden agency hiding records in violation of law.”

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