A second set of classified documents was found by aides to President Joe Biden at a location separate from Biden’s former Washington office where records were first discovered in November, according to media reports Wednesday.
The disclosure, first reported by NBC News, comes a day after Biden told reporters he was “surprised” by the discovery of the first batch of documents at an office he used after serving as vice president and before he launched the 2020 White House campaign.
The White House confirmed the Nov. 2 discovery in a statement Monday, saying officials were cooperating with a Justice Department review that appeared to be nearing an end.
It was not immediately clear how many documents were found at the second location or their classification level.
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The Justice Department review of the Biden documents is being managed by Chicago U.S. Attorney John Lausch Jr.
A person familiar with the matter said that an initial assessment was nearing an end and that federal authorities were facing an inflection point on whether there was a need to proceed to fuller inquiry or determine that no such investigation was necessary.
In addressing the matter Tuesday, Biden did not indicate that other locations would be the subject of searches, maintaining only that officials had acted appropriately when the Nov. 2 discovery was made and that they were cooperating with the Justice review.
“They did what they should have done,” Biden said. “They immediately called the archive, immediately called the archive, turned them over to the archives.”
Biden added: “But I don’t know what’s in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were. I’ve turned over the boxes.”
More:White House refuses to answer key questions about Biden classified documents
The initial disclosure of the Biden documents, first reported Monday by CBS News, prompted immediate comparisons to the classified records recovered at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last year, though the episodes are marked by key differences.
Trump had repeatedly resisted efforts by the National Archives to recover the material, including failing to fully respond to a subpoena issued for the records by federal law enforcement authorities, prompting the FBI to lead an unprecedented search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, resulting in the seizure of the classified documents and thousands of other government records.
In the Biden case, the White House has maintained that the the small number of documents were immediately returned to the archives.
“The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the archives,” said a White House statement, highlighting the differences between the Biden case and Trump’s resistance to return the caches of documents he had moved to Mar-a-Lago.
