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

President Biden said Thursday that authorities are “getting close” to catching the person who leaked a trove of classified documents damaging to US foreign relations — adding that he’s “not concerned” about the security breach in his first public remarks on the matter.

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

“I can’t right now. There’s a full-blown investigation going on, as you know, with the intelligence community and the Justice Department, and they’re getting close,” Biden responded.

Asked if he was concerned, Biden said: “I’m not concerned about the leak. I’m concerned that it happened. But there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”

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 scrum when a journalist from Ireland’s Newstalk radio shouted, “Mr. President, can I have a selfie?”

Biden obliged.

The president’s own apparent mishandling of classified records is under investigation by special counsel Robert Hur.

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

Biden addressed the leaks after a series of blows to US relationships over the past week — with high-profile coverage of documents detailing Ukrainian military weaknesses 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 highly classified records over several months on a Discord gaming discussion channel, according to two channel members.

The channel, called “Thug Shaker Central,” had about two dozen members, some of them non-Americans, according to anonymous members.

On Feb. 28, some of the documents were reposted by a member of the Discord channel “wow_mao.” 

A member of that channel in turn posted some of them on March 4 to the even larger channel “Minecraft Earth Map.”

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

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

Instead, “There is a little bit of showing off to friends, but as well as wanting to keep us informed.”

Some of the most damaging documents described Ukrainian military vulnerabilities in the war against Russia — with an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling CNN that specific leaked details had forced the country to change military plans ahead of an anticipated counteroffensive.

The documents also mention Zelensky’s interest in launching 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 called for about 40,000 rockets to be made and shipped in secret to Russia.

One document attributed to the CIA says Israel’s Mossad spy agency has been stoking public protests against conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office slammed the report as “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”

Still another leaked document revealed South Korean qualms about an American request to send ammunition to the US for use in Ukraine. Seoul has a policy against arming foreign nations at war.

White House spokesman John Kirby urged reporters Monday to play down the leaks, saying, “we know at least in some cases, that information was doctored.”

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

In previous instances, US leaders have vaguely suggested that leaked information may be false to squelch conversation.

Biden administration officials pressured social media companies to censor political debate about COVID-19 policies such as lockdowns and vaccine mandates by arguing that minority viewpoints were “disinformation” — after then-candidate Biden falsely claimed documents from his son Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian fabrications.

Those records showed Joe Biden’s links to Chinese and Ukrainian business dealings and have since been substantially corroborated.