Shifting stories about where law enforcement officials discovered a substance identified as cocaine at the White House this week are raising questions about how it ended up inside the building.
A Washington, D.C. fire department dispatch call on Sunday said the white powder, identified as “cocaine hydrochloride,” was discovered in the “library” of the executive mansion. But a Secret Service spokesman later said it was found in the West Wing.
While the West Wing houses the daily work offices for President Joe Biden and White House staffers, the library is located in the White House living quarters below, where access is more restricted.
The location of the substance could provide clues to whether it was brought into the building by a White House staffer, a visitor, or a Biden family member. Hunter Biden, who pleaded guilty to tax and gun charges in June, has publicly struggled with cocaine addiction for years and was booted from the U.S. Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.
The discovery of cocaine at the White House is politically inconvenient for Biden, who has faced questions about his son’s rampant drug use and foreign business dealings. During Biden’s time in the Senate, he drafted a 1986 law that instituted significantly harsher prison sentences for crack cocaine possession as compared to powder cocaine. Critics have slammed the law as racist, arguing that it disproportionately targeted the black community.
The White House was briefly evacuated on Sunday after Secret Service agents discovered the suspicious substance during a sweep of the building. President Biden and his immediate family, including son Hunter, were not at the White House at the time.
The D.C. fire department was called in to test the substance. “We have a yellow bar saying cocaine hydrochloride,” said a responder in a dispatch call published by the Daily Mail, adding that it was discovered in the library. Cocaine hydrochloride refers to the powder version of cocaine.
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, later said the substance was found in the “work area of the West Wing,” according to the New York Times.
Hunter Biden was rumored to be living at the executive mansion earlier this spring, but this has not been confirmed by the White House.
President Biden has publicly embraced his son since his guilty plea in June. Hunter Biden attended a state dinner with the Indian prime minister last month, and he joined the president and First Lady to watch July 4th fireworks from the White House balcony this week after the white substance was discovered. On Friday, shortly before the substance’s discovery, White House pool reporters saw Hunter Biden depart the White House with his father to travel to Camp David.
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