Navy sailor requested access to Biden’s medical records, military says

The sailor, whose identity has not been publicly released, is assigned to a Navy medical unit at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, near Washington, Navy spokesman Maj. Tim Hawkins said in a statement. The sailor accessed the military’s digital patient portal and searched for Biden’s name “out of curiosity,” but was ultimately unable to access records belonging to the president, Hawkins said.

“At no time was the president’s personal information compromised,” he added.

The case came to light because a colleague reported the sailor for violating medical privacy laws, Hawkins said, noting that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service concluded in April that there had been a violation, although “the record that the sailor accessed was not the electronic record of the president of the United States.” The Navy did not release its findings at the time.

The sailor, described only as junior-ranking, was administratively disciplined, a U.S. defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The story, first reported by CBS News, came days before Biden was scheduled to undergo a regular physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland. The Marine unit in Virginia has a separate mission of training sailors in medicine and has about 400 doctors, nurses and other personnel assigned to that mission.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that the White House and senior Defense Department officials were briefed on the situation in February.

The Navy’s disclosure of the incident comes more than a year after another high-profile data security incident involving the military emerged.

In this case, a junior member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard accessed hundreds of highly classified documents without authorization and posted images of those documents online. Jack Teixeira, 22, faces up to 16 years in prison after pleading guilty to knowingly retaining and transmitting information relating to the national defense.

Teixeira remains in custody awaiting trial this fall. The Air Force has also requested that Teixeira be court-martialed on charges of obstruction of justice and refusal to obey orders. A commander overseeing the case is expected to reveal his intentions regarding the case soon.