FBI More classified documents found at Wilmington, Delaware, president’s home Joe Biden His personal lawyer and a prosecutor said on Saturday evening that during a consensual search that lasted nearly 13 hours on Friday
The search marks the fourth time since November that classified records or material have been found at Biden’s private address.
His personal attorney, Bob Bauer, said in a statement the Justice Department “seized six items containing documents containing classification markings and surrounding material.”
Joseph D. Fitzpatrick, assistant US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, told NBC News: “I can confirm that the FBI conducted a well-planned, consensual search of the president’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday.”
Bauer said some items from Biden’s tenure in the Senate, where he represented Delaware from 1973 to 2009. And some of the items were from his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017.
In addition to those records, the FBI agent, who did not have a search warrant, also seized some notes that Biden had written by hand as vice president, according to the lawyer and the White House.
According to special counsel to the president Richard Sauber, neither Biden nor First Lady Jill Biden were present during the search.
items connect to each other an unknown number of classified government records The first was discovered by the president’s lawyers.
A small number of classified records were found for the first time by Biden’s lawyers on November 2 in a private office he kept at a Washington, DC think tank after he ended his term as vice president in the Obama administration in 2017.
The White House only disclosed that discovery on 9 January.
On December 20, some classified records were found in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington home.
Subsequently, on January 11, a page of classified material was found at the Wilmington residence. Then, the next day, five more pages of classified records were found in a room adjacent to Biden’s garage when DOJ officials traveled there to take possession of the single. The page was found last day.
The White House has said that when the president’s lawyers received the previous documents, they immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration and the DOJ.
Friday’s search was the first time it was publicly revealed that federal law enforcement officials have searched government documents at Biden’s private addresses.
Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of government records after he became vice president.
former President Donald Trump He is being criminally investigated by another special counsel for taking hundreds of classified records and other government documents from the White House at the time he left office. Trump is also being monitored for obstruction of justice by obstructing efforts by government officials to recover those documents.
The FBI raided Trump’s home at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida in early August, where they found thousands of pages of government records. The FBI had a search warrant in that case.
By law, presidents and vice presidents must return government documents to the National Archives upon leaving office.
Biden and the White House have been criticized for a two-month gap in disclosing the discovery of the first batch of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington.
That first search came six days before the midterm elections when the balance of political party control of both chambers of Congress is at stake.
And critics have asked why other private locations held by the president were not searched until after the White House disclosed the first search.
In his statement Saturday, Bauer said the president’s legal team offered to provide “immediate access” to Biden’s private residence “to allow the DOJ to search the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potentially classified material.” for.”
He said the motion was made “in the interest of moving the process along as quickly as possible”.
“The DOJ requested that the discovery not be made public in advance per its standard procedures, and we agreed to cooperate,” Bauer said.
He said that on Friday, “the DOJ completed an extensive search of all materials at the President’s Wilmington home.”
“It began at approximately 9:45 a.m. and ended at approximately 10:30 a.m. and covered all working, living and storage areas in the home,” Bauer said. “By agreement with the DOJ, representatives from both the individual legal team and the Office of White House Counsel were present.”
The officers had “full access to the president’s home”, which included “personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules and reminders from decades past.”
“The DOJ took possession of materials believed to be within the scope of its investigation, including six items including documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which Some were from his tenure as vice president,” Bauer said.
“DOJ further reviewed personally handwritten notes from the years of the vice president.”
“As stated in the statement issued on January 14, we have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency with established norms and limits necessary to protect the integrity of the investigation,” the counsel said.
“We will continue to do this throughout our cooperation with the DOJ,” Bauer said.
“The president and his team are working expeditiously to ensure the DOJ and special counsel receive the thorough review they need,” Sauber, Biden’s White House counsel, said in its own statement.
“From the beginning the president has been committed to handling this responsibly because he takes it seriously,” Sabir said.