President Joe Biden's Democratic allies have started turning on him in light of his classified documents scandal, with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) saying the president should be "embarrassed," Bloomberg reported Sunday.
FBI agents on Friday found another batch of mishandled classified documents during a more than 12 hour search of Biden's Wilmington, Del., home. The slow drip of scandal has left high-ranking Democrats irritated at the president.
Biden "should be embarrassed by the situation," Durbin, the Senate's number-two Democrat and a longtime ally of the president, told CNN on Sunday. Mishandling documents as the president did is "just unacceptable," Durbin said.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) told NBC that Biden "should have a lot of regrets," calling the president's actions "irresponsible."
Durbin's and Manchin's words are a sharp contrast from Biden's comments on the scandal.
"I have no regrets," Biden said Thursday, one week after his attorney general announced the creation of a special counsel to investigate the mishandled documents.
News broke this month that Biden's lawyers had found classified documents in the president's think-tank office. More documents then surfaced at his Wilmington residence, likely prompting the FBI search that found the latest batch.
Biden in recent days has faced other bad news: His already low poll numbers have plummeted amid the scandal, while his powerful chief of staff, Ron Klain, is planning to resign.
While Democrats distance themselves from the president, Republicans have started wondering where the documents imbroglio will lead, Politico reported.
"Watergate started as a very small burglary," House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) told ABC on Sunday, "and it led to the president of the United States resigning."