The last time Joe Biden packed up and left office, he took with him thousands of papers from his decades in public service — including some classified documents that should have gone to the National Archives for safekeeping. That move spawned a federal investigation into whether Biden had knowingly broken the law and a damaging Justice Department report that referred to Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” igniting public concerns over his mental acuity that eventually led Biden to drop out of the race. The discovery also watered down the significance of the criminal case against President-elect Donald Trump, who had been accused of purposefully hoarding top secret documents at his Florida estate — and it helped fuel Trump’s claims of unfair political persecution. The moving trucks are at the White House again, and Biden’s staff is loading documents and items for storage as he prepares to depart next week. The administration has promised a new, more secure protocol to review and separate out classified information. But with just a week left to go, there’s no word yet on recommendations from a federal task force formed at Biden’s behest to develop best practices for transitions. “We are going to do our best, certainly, to be careful, to follow the rules, to do this the right way, to follow traditions, obviously, as the president truly wants to do,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the packing effort. When a president packs up and leaves the White House Biden formed the presidential records task force early in 2024, in order to study past transitions to determine best practices for safeguarding classified information from an outgoing administration. It was also assessing the need for changes to existing policies and procedures to prevent the removal of sensitive information that by law should be kept with the National Archives and Records Administration. White House officials said the work continues and were still expecting to provide recommendations “in advance of the next presidential transition.” Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said it would be better to err on the side of caution and keep more documents in safe storage. And although the U.S. government should probably revisit how and why documents are classified, she said, until the nation figures that out, the documents “need to be turned over to the National Archives and we need the best, easiest mechanism to do it.” “The most important thing is to make sure that state secrets remain secret,” she said. Generally speaking, when a president leaves the White House, he has to sort through all the stuff he’s accumulated. That’s what Biden is doing now as he prepares to leave office. He is allowed to take personal items, like diaries and family photos. But most of the papers and memos — and especially classified documents — are sent to the National Archives under the Presidential Records Act. The 1978 law requires the preservation of presidential documents as property of the U.S. government. It was passed in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, when a collection of secret tapes that President Richard Nixon had considered destroying played a defining role. But the policies meant to control the handling of the nation’s secrets are haphazardly enforced among top officials and rely almost wholly on good faith. Classified documents have […]