...Biden said. “When my lawyers were clearing out my office at the University of Pennsylvania, they set up an office for me, secure office in the capital when I, for four years after being vice president, I was a professor at Penn. They found some documents in a box, you know, a locked cabinet, or at least a closet...
...Biden said that when he was briefed about the lawyer’s discovery, he was “surprised to learn that there are any government records that were taken there to that office.” “But I don’t know what’s in the documents,” Biden claimed.....
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798
...(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States...
My "armchair lawyer" thinking:
•Biden admits to knowingly allowing other persons besides himself to access/move docs.
•Biden admits to his office being used to facilitate misplaced classified docs.
•Biden admits that he had no knowledge of other persons moving docs to that location. That is a tacit admission that he did not (could not) know if the docs that left his possession were being moved/handled by authorized personnel, or not.
From my point of view, it seems clear that Biden is looking to throw one or more of his lawyers under the bus- or more likely one of their employees, for "accidentally" moving classified docs. My contention is that it was still Biden's legal responsibility to safeguard those documents, regardless of if he had legal authority (he didn't) to take those docs, or not.
Biden's public statement require legal action to be taken immediately, without need for determining (wasting time) whether or not he had any authority to possess the docs in the first place.
So in my armchair lawyer opinion, I say rush the play call, and run the ball straight up the middle, right now, and gain ground while the dems are still disoriented from Joe fumbling the ball. We need to know who had possession of those docs, besides Biden. This demands an investigation.
I'd rather turn the clock back for "legitimate" (notice the sarcasm) presidents: Reagan as president, Bush as VP. If Bush had taken classified documents while VP, which was then found out while he was president, could he then have declassified those documents to avoid getting in to any trouble?
Technically speaking, no, crimes involving classified materials are centered on the time/date of the crime. The laws that were in place at the time of the crime apply, and post changes to those laws do not retroactively affect the legality of prior crimes. That point is covered in the Cornell Law link posted in the OP.