The FBI searched US President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday and located additional documents with classified markings and also took possession of some of his handwritten notes, the president’s lawyer said on Saturday.
The president voluntarily allowed the FBI into his home, but the lack of a search warrant did not dim the extraordinary nature of the search. It compounded the embarrassment to Biden that started with the disclosure on Jan. 12 that the president’s attorneys had found a “small number” of classified records at a former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington shortly before the midterm elections.
Since then, attorneys found six classified documents in Biden’s Wilmington home library from his time as vice president.
Photo: AP
Although Biden has maintained “there’s no there there,” the discoveries have become a political liability as he prepares to launch a re-election bid, and they undercut his efforts to portray an image of propriety to the US public after the tumultuous presidency of his predecessor, Donald Trump.
During Friday’s search, which lasted nearly 13 hours, the FBI took six items that contained documents with classified markings, said Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal lawyer.
The items spanned Biden’s time in the US Senate and the vice presidency, while the notes dated to his time as vice president, he said.
The level of classification, and whether the documents removed by the FBI remained classified, was not immediately clear as the US Department of Justice reviews the records.
Assistant US Attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick on Saturday confirmed that the FBI had executed “a planned, consensual search” of the president’s residence in Wilmington.
The president and first lady Jill Biden were not at the home when it was searched. They were spending the weekend at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Speaking to reporters during a trip to California on Thursday, Biden said he was “fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.”
“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden said. “We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department.”
It remained to be seen whether additional searches by federal officials of other locations might be conducted. Biden’s personal attorneys previously conducted a search of the Rehoboth Beach residence and said they did not find any official documents or classified records.
The Biden investigation has also complicated the justice department’s probe into Trump’s retention of classified documents and official records after he left office.
The department has said Trump took hundreds of records marked classified with him upon leaving the White House in early 2021 and resisted months of requests to return them to the government, and that it had to obtain a search warrant to retrieve them.
Bauer said the FBI requested that the White House not comment on the search before it was conducted, and that Biden’s personal and White House attorneys were present.
The FBI, he added, “had full access to the president’s home, including personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules and reminders going back decades.”
The department, he added, “took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the president’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as vice president.”
US Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed former Maryland US Attorney Robert Hur as a special counsel to investigate any potential wrongdoing surrounding the Biden documents.
Hur is set to take over from the Trump-appointed Illinois US Attorney John Lausch in overseeing the probe.
“Since the beginning, the president has been committed to handling this responsibly, because he takes this seriously,” White House lawyer Richard Sauber said on Saturday.
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