Six more classified documents found in Biden's Wilmington home search
DOJ finds SIX new classified documents at Biden’s Delaware mansion: 12-hour search was kept secret as president remains unremorseful and his chief of staff plans to quit
- A fresh search of President Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, by the Department of Justice on Friday found six more classified documents
- Biden’s lawyer revealed the search and subsequent discovery in a statement
- Earlier this month, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s retention of government records after he was VP
- Saturday’s find marks the fourth time officials have recovered documents from Biden’s time as vice president at either his old DC office or his Wilmington home
Prosecutors have seized more classified materials after President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, was searched on Friday in a secret search that lasted almost 13 hours.
The Department of Justice revealed how federal investigators found another six classified documents in what is now the fourth occasion similar documents have been retrieved.
The president and first lady Jill Biden were not at their home when it was searched. The couple are spending the weekend at their other home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
In what has become a full-blown crisis for the White House, the Justice Department stated how it ‘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 [the materials] were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President,’ Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney explained in a detailed statement on Saturday night.
The prosecutors also ‘took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years,’ he said.
President Joe Biden walks from St. Edmund Roman Catholic Church after attending Mass in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on Saturday
How the scandal of government documents unfolded since classified records were found in Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center on November 2
Bauer said that the president’s legal team offered to provide ‘prompt access’ to Biden’s private residence ‘to allow DOJ to conduct a search of the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potential classified material.’
He said that the offer was made ‘in the interest of moving the process forward as expeditiously as possible.’
‘DOJ requested that the search not be made public in advance, in accordance with its standard procedures, and we agreed to cooperate,’ Bauer said in his email.
He said that on Friday, the ‘DOJ completed a thorough search of all the materials in the President’s Wilmington home.’
‘It began at approximately 9:45 AM and concluded at around 10:30 PM and covered all working, living and storage spaces in the home,’ Bauer said. ‘By agreement with DOJ, representatives of both the personal legal team and the White House Counsel’s Office were present.’
The DOJ had ‘full access to the President’s home,’ which included ‘personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules, and reminders going back decades.’
‘DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years,’ Bauer wrote in an email.
The Department of Justice has revealed how a search of President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, has found another six classified documents
These latest documents are in addition to various other classified government records that had already been discovered this month at Biden’s Wilmington home. Biden, pictured Friday
The extraordinary search was the first time it was revealed publicly that federal law enforcement authorities have conducted a search for government documents at Biden’s private addresses.
Saturday’s find marks the fourth time officials have recovered documents from Biden’s time as vice president either at his old Washington, D.C., office or his Wilmington home.
Bauer said the FBI requested that the White House not comment on the search before it was conducted.
The Justice 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 (1973 to 2009,) and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President (from 2009 through 2017).’
These latest documents are in addition to various other classified government records that had already been discovered this month at Biden’s Wilmington home.
Friday’s search came more than a week after Biden’s attorneys found six other classified documents in the president’s home library from his time as vice president, and nearly three months after lawyers found a small number of classified records at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, and office he used after ending his tenure as VP in the Obama administration in 2017.
It came a day after Biden maintained that ‘there´s no there there’ on the document discoveries, which have become a political headache as he prepares to launch a reelection bid and undercut his efforts to portray an image of propriety to the American public after the tumultuous presidency of his predecessor, Donald Trump.
‘We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,’ Biden told reporters on Thursday in California. ‘We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department.’
Another set of documents were found on Friday at Biden’s Wilmington home. This weekend Biden has opted to take a winter trip to his beach house rather return to the scene where more classified documents were uncovered
When a reporter asked if he had any regrets about the sensitive files debacle, Biden said the interrogation by the media ‘bugs’ him when we ‘we have serious problem here we’re talking about’
‘I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there there.’
Biden added that he was ‘fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.’
It remains 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.
Earlier this month, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed former Maryland U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s retention of government records after he was vice president and pinpoint any potential wrongdoing surrounding the Biden documents.
The Justice Department has searched Biden’s home in Delaware and located six documents containing classification markings and also took possession of some of his notes, the president’s lawyer said Saturday
Earlier this month Biden revealed how lawyers ‘discovered a small number of documents with classified markings in storage areas and file cabinets in my home and my – my personal library.’ He also referenced the discovery of materials at the Penn Biden Center in Washington
The White House has been criticized over how it has handled the disclosure of the discovery of the documents and the search which ensued after the initial small of records was found on November 2 at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington.
That discovery came just six days before the midterm elections yet The White House waited until this month to reveal the discovery.
‘Since the beginning, the President has been committed to handling this responsibly because he takes this seriously,’ White House lawyer Richard Sauber said Saturday.
‘The President´s lawyers and White House Counsel’s Office will continue to cooperate with DOJ and the Special Counsel to help ensure this process is conducted swiftly and efficiently.’
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 Justice Department says 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.
A box labeled ‘Important Doc’s + Photos’ appears to have been left unsealed on a table in the Delaware home of President Joe Biden, in a photo released Friday from Hunter Biden’s laptop
By law, presidents and vice presidents must return government documents to the National Archives and Records Administration when they leave office.
The Biden document discoveries and the investigation into Trump, which is in the hands of special counsel Jack Smith, are significantly different.
Biden has made a point of cooperating with the DOJ probe at every turn – and Friday’s search was voluntary – although questions about his transparency with the public remain.
Biden is under severe pressure from the media, Republicans in Congress and a Justice Department probe run by a special counsel.
The White House has since been condemned for their lack of transparency and Biden’s handling of files is now being investigated by a Special Counsel.
The president’s suggestion Americans care about other issues was also brought into question by a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday that said 60 percent of Americans think he acted inappropriately.
The majority of the 1,380 American voters asked in the survey, acknowledged the scandal is ‘serious’ and should be investigated, but less than half think it should result in criminal charges.
Just 36 percent approved of the job Biden is doing and 53 percent disapprove.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel slammed Biden’s comments about the documents. ‘Biden is a hypocrite who can’t be trusted,’ she told DailyMail.com
On Friday Republican Party chief Ronna McDaniel branded President Joe Biden a hypocrite for his handling of classified documents by saying he had ‘no regrets’ after insisting before that he took the issue seriously.
A day earlier, the president shrugged off the importance of a scandal that has seen his White House bombarded with questions about who knew what and when.
And he suggested the American people did not understand the media’s obsession with it.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told DailyMail.com: ‘For weeks, Joe Biden and his team insisted he takes classified documents ‘seriously.’
‘Now, Biden says he has “no regrets” about multiple classified documents being stored in multiple insecure locations for multiple years where an untold number of people had access to them.
‘Biden is a hypocrite who can’t be trusted. In his own words, how could ‘anyone be that irresponsible?'”
The latest discovery of documents comes as White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who has spent more than two years as Biden’s top aide, is preparing to leave his job within weeks
The latest discovery of documents comes as White House chief of staff Ron Klain , who has spent more than two years as President Joe Biden’s top aide, is preparing to leave his job in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with Klain’s plans.
Klain’s expected departure comes not long after the White House and Democrats had a better-than-expected showing in the November elections, buoyed by a series of major legislative accomplishments, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sweeping climate, health care and tax package that all Republicans rejected.
The personnel change is also a rarity for an administration that has had minimal turnover so far.
No member of Biden’s Cabinet has stepped down, in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s White House, with frequent staff turmoil and other crises.
The person familiar with Klain’s plans was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm the development, which was first reported by the New York Times.
Klain, a longtime Democratic political operative, has overseen a West Wing that has been largely free of the high-stakes drama that permeated the upper echelons of the Trump administration.
Klain has been an outspoken proponent of Biden’s agenda via Twitter, where he frequently engages with reporters to defend the president’s record.
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