There is trouble brewing at the White House.
New reports signal growing animosity between the White House press corps and Karine Jean-Pierre over her refusal to stray from talking points and her providing false information.
According to Mediaite, more than a half dozen press corps members told CNN’s Oliver Darcy that “the temperature has gone up a lot in the last few days” in the White House briefing room.
The Biden administration has largely enjoyed a pleasant relationship with much of the mainstream media throughout his presidency but the discovery of classified materials months after the FBI raided former President Trump’s home has brought up serious concerns.
Classified records were found inside the Washington, D.C., offices of the Penn Biden Center think tank on Nov. 2, 2022, but only disclosed to the public last week.
“She is arguably the least effective White House press secretary of the television era,” said one unnamed reporter who Darcy identified as a White House veteran, though this person did exclude Trump-era press secretaries from that dig.
Another White House reporter told CNN, “You just get the feeling that you’re wasting your time and whatever is in front of her in the binder is all she is going to say, no matter how many times you ask the question. It’s just a painful waste of time.”
Pressure has been building in the White House briefing room since the initial discovery of Biden’s classified materials. As of last week, Jean-Pierre had repeatedly said that the administration’s search for classified documents had been completed.
However, that same night, five additional classified documents were found at President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, DE residence. The Press Sec. did not disclose the discovery of the documents at Friday’s briefing. The information wasn’t revealed until the White House released a statement on Saturday. (RELATED: More Classified Documents Found at Biden’s Home)
On Tuesday, Jean-Pierre was pressed on whether the discovery of classified documents had been concealed from her or whether she knew about them and intentionally misled the reporters in the room during previous briefings. After multiple, lengthy non-answers, Jean-Pierre finally said she did not know the documents had been recovered ahead of last Friday’s briefing.
“There is the expectation that when you say something, it’s going to be true,” an unnamed White House correspondent told Darcy. “That’s been the biggest credibility hit for her, it’s answering a question in a way that ends up not being true.”
The Justice Department seized additional classified records from President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home after an FBI search on Friday.
“On Jan. 20, 2023, the FBI executed a planned, consensual search of the President’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware,” Joseph D. Fitzpatrick, an assistant U.S. attorney to U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch, told Fox News Saturday.
The search came a week after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed U.S. attorney Robert Hur to investigate the president’s potentially unauthorized removal and improper retention of classified documents and records discovered at the Penn Biden Center and his Wilmington home.
On Monday, a House Democrat Ro Khanna (Calif.) called for an investigation into the connection between documents discovered at the UPenn Biden center and China.
“Congressman, what about the potential connections with China here and the tens of millions of dollars that China gave to the University of Pennsylvania at the same time these classified documents were sitting in the Penn Biden Center?” Fox News anchor John Roberts asked.
“Well, we need to look at that. We need to know what the facts are,” Khanna replied, adding:
Who was the money coming from? Was it coming from private individuals? Was it coming from people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party? What was the purpose of the funding? Was it connected in any way to the Penn Center? I mean, we can’t just have two facts out there without a deeper investigation of all the facts. But if you’re asking, should all the facts come out? Of course they should.
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