Biden says US is ‘close’ to finding leaker, claims he’s ‘not concerned’

President Biden said Thursday that US authorities are “close” to catching the person who leaked a wealth of classified documents harming friendly countries – adding that he was “not concerned” about the historic security breach in his first public statements on the subject.

A journalist asked Biden, who was traveling in Ireland, for an update on the investigation after the 80-year-old planted a tree with Irish President Michael Higgins.

“I can not right now. As you know, there’s a full investigation going on with the Secret Services and the Justice Department, and they’re getting closer,” Biden replied.

When asked if he was concerned, Biden said, “I’m not worried about the leak. I’m worried it happened. But there is nothing concurrent that I know of that would be of great importance.”

The President didn’t answer a foreign reporter’s shouted question: ‘Are British secrets safe in American hands, Mr President?’ – but returned to the media melee when a senior journalist on Irish radio Newstalk yelled: ‘Mr. President, can I have a selfie?”

Biden committed.

The President’s apparent misuse of classified records is currently being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Hur.

Sensitive documents were found Nov. 2 at Biden’s insecure former DC office, and other caches were later found in the garage of his Wilmington, Del. home and throughout the residence.

Biden addressed the leaks after a series of blows to US relations last week – with high-profile coverage of documents detailing the weakness of Ukraine’s military and American surveillance of South Korean, Israeli and Egyptian officials.

The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that the person who leaked the documents is a young adult who works at a military base and shared the top-secret recordings on a Discord gaming discussion channel for several months, according to two channel members.

Dubbed the “Thug Shaker Central,” the channel had about two dozen members, including some non-Americans, according to anonymous members.

On February 28th, some of the documents were reposted by a member of the discord channel wow_mao.

In turn, a member of this channel posted some of them on March 4th on the larger channel of the event, Minecraft Earth Map.

The leak made headlines with an April 6 article in the New York Times about a US investigation into the source of the link.

The Washington Post reported that, according to a friend of the leaker, he was not motivated by a desire to release US secrets and was “not a whistleblower in the slightest.”

Instead, “there’s a bit of showing off in front of friends, but also a desire to keep us updated.”

Some of the most damaging documents detailed Ukraine’s military vulnerabilities in the war against Russia — with an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy telling CNN certain leaked details had forced the country to change its military plans ahead of an expected counteroffensive.

The documents also mention Zelenskyy’s interest in military attacks inside Russia, adding that such operations could be used by China as a pretext to arm Moscow.

Another document revealed that Egypt recently requested the manufacture of about 40,000 missiles to be secretly shipped to Russia.

A document attributed to the CIA says Israel’s Mossad spy agency has fomented public protests against conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office has described the report as “false and unfounded”.

However, another leaked document reveals South Korean concerns over an American request to send ammunition to the US for use in Ukraine. Seoul has a policy against arming foreign nations in war.

White House spokesman John Kirby urged reporters Monday to downplay the leaks, saying, “We know, in at least some cases, that this information has been tampered with.”

“We don’t know who is responsible for this. And we don’t know if they have more than they want to release. So we’re watching that and monitoring it as best we can,” said Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications

In previous cases, US leaders have vaguely suggested that leaked information could be false in a bid to quash talks.

Biden administration officials pressured social media companies to censor political debate over COVID-19 policies like lockdowns and vaccination mandates, arguing that minority viewpoints were “disinformation” — after then-candidate Biden falsely claimed claimed documents from his son Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian forgeries.

These records showed Joe Biden’s ties to Chinese and Ukrainian business dealings and have since been significantly corroborated.