FBI Director weighs in on classified documents, says rules are 'there for a reason'

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Senators confused how Biden could have classified documents

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FBI Director Christopher Wray urged U.S. officials and lawmakers to be "conscious of the rules" for handling classified documents Thursday, offering veiled criticism of President Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Wray made the comments during an FBI press conference Thursday but clarified that he was not commenting on any specific investigation. Both Biden and Trump are facing special counsel investigations into their mishandling of classified documents. Former Vice President Mike Pence has also turned over documents to the DOJ this week.

"Obviously I can’t comment on any specific investigation, but we have had, for quite a number of years, any number of mishandling investigations," Wray told reporters.

"That is, unfortunately, a regular part of our counterintelligence division, counterintelligence programs work, and people need to be conscious of the rules for classified information and appropriate handling of it," he continued. "Those rules are there for a reason."

TED CRUZ SAYS IT'S ‘CRITICAL’ FOR FBI TO SEARCH HUNTER BIDEN'S HOME FOR CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Friday, Dec. 2, 2022, in Ann Arbor, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

U.S. President Joe Biden makes an announcement on additional military support for Ukraine in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 25, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsels Jack Smith and Robert Hur to investigate Trump and Biden respectively. The FBI raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago home this summer after the former president declined to return classified documents to federal authorities.

White House lawyers uncovered Biden's first batch of misplaced classified documents at the Washington offices of the Penn Biden Center think tank. They then discovered two more stashes of documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. FBI officials later found a third stash in the Wilmington home during a consensual search.

The documents seized from Trump all date back to his time in office, while the documents seized from Biden's properties date back to both the Obama administration and his time in the Senate.

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Republicans on Capitol Hill have sought further details about the contents of the misplaced documents. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, accused the White House of blocking Congress from exercising its right to oversight regarding the investigation.

"This is very serious," said during a Thursday meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It is completely unacceptable to me, I believe on a bipartisan basis, for the Biden administration to block Congress from performing its constitutional duty here…there are issues much larger than individual criminal investigation that I think needs to be addressed."

An empty Secret Service guard shack located outside the access road leading to President Joe Biden's private residence in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday, April 19, 2019. The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the storage of classified documents at Biden's home after leaving office in 2017.  (Peter Doocy/Fox News)

Former President Donald Trump. ( SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images))

"We are the policymakers," he continued. "And it’s just, it's not hard to imagine some scenario in which classified information is taken out of a secure facility, is made available to our adversaries, that it would threaten the national security of the United States, in ways that we would need to respond to as policymakers."

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The DOJ has yet to announce an investigation into Pence, who informed Congress of his own stash of classified documents on Tuesday.