Biden Jokes He 'Sold a Lot of State Secrets' to Modi and Tech CEOs as Special Counsel Probed His Documents (June 23, 2023)

President Joe Biden opened a White House meeting with India’s prime minister and some of the biggest names in tech with a joke. “I was just thanking the—anyway, I started off without you, and I sold a lot of state secrets and a lot of very important things that we shared,” he told reporters as they filed in. The room laughed.

At the time, a Justice Department special counsel was investigating how classified documents had ended up in Biden’s Delaware home and his former office. The video above shows the remark from the June 23, 2023, meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the East Room. Quotes are from the official transcript published by the American Presidency Project and the White House press pool’s reports [1][2].

”I Sold a Lot of State Secrets”

The press pool walked in at 12:14 p.m. to find Biden and Modi seated at the center of a long table, facing the cameras in front of American and Indian flags [2]. The pool noted that “at the top of the meeting, POTUS made a joke to the press corps about sharing state secrets with chief executives and Indian officials before the press came into the room” [2].

“No, all kidding aside,” Biden continued after the laughter, “look, we’re teaming up to design and develop new technologies that are going to transform the lives of our people around the world” [1].

He told the executives the next decade would bring more technological change than the last 50 years, and he asked for their help “to build guardrails around emerging technologies so that they’re trustworthy, they’re secure, and uphold our shared value and human rights” [1].

He closed by handing the floor to Modi “to say nice things about me.” “Sometimes, it’s a little difficult to say too much in front of all the press present here,” Modi said, speaking through an interpreter [1].

Who Was in the Room

The guest list read like a who’s who of the tech world. According to the White House list circulated by the pool, the participants included [2]:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
AMD CEO Lisa Su, Flex CEO Revathi Advaithi and Planet Labs CEO Will Marshall
Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani and Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson
India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, and its national security adviser, Ajit Doval

A Joke in the Middle of a Real Probe

The joke landed at an awkward moment. Five months earlier, on Jan. 12, 2023, Attorney General Merrick Garland had named former Justice Department official Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate how classified documents came to be at Biden’s Delaware residence and at a Washington think tank office he had used after his vice presidency [3].

The White House had insisted Biden did not know the documents were there. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters he “was surprised that the records were there,” as HYGO News reported in its page on that briefing.

A Big Week for India

The meeting capped Modi’s official state visit. The White House fact sheet for the visit listed a long string of deals [4]:

Jet engines: a proposal by General Electric to jointly produce its F414 jet engine in India with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
Chips: Micron Technology’s plan to invest more than $800 million toward a new $2.75 billion semiconductor assembly and test facility in India.
Drones: India’s plan to buy armed MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones.
Space: India’s signing of the Artemis Accords, joining 26 other countries.

Hunter at the State Dinner

The night before, the Bidens had hosted Modi at a state dinner, and Hunter Biden and his wife, Melissa Cohen, attended, Fox News reported. The same day, the House Ways and Means Committee released testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who said the Justice Department, FBI and IRS interfered with the tax investigation of the president’s son [5].

One of them, Gary Shapley, said investigators had obtained a 2017 WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden told a Chinese business partner, “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled” [5].

By the Numbers

12:14 p.m.: when the press entered the East Room and Biden made the joke [1][2].
More than $800 million: Micron’s planned investment in a $2.75 billion facility in India [4].
27: countries signed on to the Artemis Accords once India joined [4].
5 months: the time between Hur’s appointment and the joke [3].
February 2024: when Hur delivered his report [6].

What Happened Next

No charges, and a damaging description. Hur’s report concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter.” But it also found that “our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” Explaining why a jury might acquit, Hur wrote that Biden would likely present himself “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” [6].

The ghostwriter tapes. The report also quoted Biden telling his ghostwriter in 2017 that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” which Hur said could have referred to something other than the Afghanistan documents at the center of the case [6].

The audio came out. In May 2025, after Biden left office, Axios published audio of his interview with Hur. A Biden spokeswoman said, “The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago. The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public,” CNN reported [7].