The Department of Justice (DOJ) found additional classified documents during a search of United States President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday (January 20), said his personal attorney Bob Bauer in a statement late Saturday. According to Bauer, at least six more items including “documents with classification markings and surrounding material” were recovered dating back to the incumbent president’s tenure as a Senator from Delaware between 1973 to 2009.
Other documents were from when he served as the vice president in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017, said Bauer. This comes after a consensual DOJ search which lasted for at least 12 hours. He added, “DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”
Biden’s personal attorney also said that the president offered access “to his home to allow DOJ to conduct a search of the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potential classified material.” Furthermore, Bauer said that investigators had full access to Biden’s home which included, “personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules, and reminders going back decades.”
Neither the president nor the first lady Dr Jill Biden was present at their Delaware residence during the search which was coordinated by the Justice Department investigators and the president’s personal and White House lawyers, said special counsel to the president, Richard Sauber, in another statement.
“The President and his team are working swiftly to ensure DOJ and the Special Counsel have what they need to conduct a thorough review,” said Sauber. He added, “Since the beginning, the President has been committed to handling this responsibly because he takes this seriously.”
“DOJ requested that the search not be made public in advance, in accordance with its standard procedures, and we agreed to cooperate,” said Bauer, on Saturday. He added, “As noted in the Statement we released on January 14, we have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”
This comes after Biden, on Thursday said that a few documents were “filed in the wrong place”. He added, “We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department. We are fully cooperating to getting this resolved quickly, I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets”.
Earlier this month, the White House and Biden’s attorneys first acknowledged the claims that they found the classified documents while “packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space” back in November referring to Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, DC.
Since then Biden’s residence in Delaware as well as the aforementioned centre which Biden used sometimes as an office space between 2017 and 2020 have been searched multiple times. This also comes days after Attorney General, Merrick Garland, appointed special counsel Robert Hur a former US attorney from Maryland to oversee the DOJ investigation into the incumbent president’s alleged mishandling of the documents.
(With inputs from agencies)
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