The other documents case: Delaware supreme court hears FOIA case on Biden’s Senate documents
Fox News
Former President Donald Trump’s case isn’t the only documents matter in court this week, as the Delaware Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Wednesday regarding current President Joe Biden’s Senate records held at the University of Delaware.
Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group, and Daily Caller News Foundation first sued the university under the state’s Freedom of Information Act in 2020 — before Biden became president and well before records were subject of a larger investigation by special counsel Robert Hur.
The FBI has twice searched the university as part of a larger probe into Biden’s possession of classified documents found at his home and office at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center.
While the case of Judicial Watch v. University of Delaware is a civil matter, it takes on added significance after the indictment last week of Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
FBI TWICE SEARCHED UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE FOR CLASSIFIED BIDEN DOCS: SOURCES
The arguments are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. at the Supreme Court building in Dover, Delaware, according to Judicial Watch.
“The sketchy secrecy on the Biden Senate records and his deal with the University of Delaware need to end,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “And President Biden could end the dispute by simply releasing the details about his Senate records. What is Biden hiding?”
The university honoring an agreement with Biden, said University of Delaware’s director of external relations Peter Bothum.
“President Biden donated his senatorial papers to the University of Delaware pursuant to an agreement that prohibits the university from providing public access to those papers until they have been properly processed and archived,” Bothum told Fox News Digital in an email statement.
“The university is bound by, and will comply with, the agreement,” Bothum continued. “Until the archival process is complete and the collection is opened to the public, access is only available with President Biden’s express consent.”
In April 2020, Judicial Watch requested records regarding Biden’s tenure as a Senator that have been housed at the University of Delaware Library since 2012. That same month, the Daily Caller News Foundation requested all agreements concerning the storage of more than 1,850 boxes of archival records and 415 gigabytes of electronic records from Biden’s senate career from 1973 through 2009, among other requests.
The university responded to both that public funds are not used to support the Biden Senate papers, and that Delaware law only requires the release of information that is funded by taxpayers, according to the complaint.
A lower state court sided with the university, and the plaintiffs appealed to the state’s high court in January.
Biden was chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a role that would have given him access to classified records. Biden’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer said in January 2023 that classified Senate records were discovered during a search at Biden’s Wilmington home.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur to investigate Biden’s potential mishandling of classified information. The previous November, Garland appointed Jack Smith as the special counsel to investigate Trump.