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DOJ search of Biden’s Wilmington home turns up more classified documents

DOJ search of Biden’s Wilmington home turns up more classified documents

Department of Justice orOfficials who searched President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday discovered six additional classified documents on the premises, the president’s lawyer said Saturday evening.

The search, which took more than 13 hours to complete, resulted in authorities seizing “materials they considered to be within the scope of their investigation, including six items consisting of classified documents 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,” Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, said in a statement. The researchers also took “for further review personally handwritten notes from the years of the vice presidency.”

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Richard Sauber, who serves as the White House’s special counsel, released a separate statement Saturday saying the president and first lady Jill Biden were not present during the search. Instead, the Bidens are spending this chilly January weekend at their beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, although White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to say whether the couple he was avoiding his primary residence.

According to Bauer, representatives from both the personal legal team and the White House counsel’s office were available for the Wilmington property search “per agreement with the DOJ.”

Bauer’s statement also said that he and the president volunteered to provide law enforcement officials with “expedited access” to Biden’s property and that the DOJ had requested that the search not be made public in advance.

Investigators at the scene “covered every work, living and storage space in the home” and were given “full access to … personally handwritten notes, files, papers, notebooks , reminders, to-do lists, schedules and reminders. decades ago.”

The six items now join other classified government materials discovered at the president’s Wilmington residence and his think tank’s office in Washington, DC. There are many unanswered questions about why Biden had classified documents from his vice presidency at his think tank’s office in Washington, DC and his home in Wilmington, as well as the circumstances under which they were found.

The White House has also faced criticism for the administration’s transparency on the issue. The first classified documents were discovered at the think tank’s office in early November, but the matter was kept private. The discovery of these materials was never made public by the White House or Biden’s personal lawyers, and was only exposed through a CBS News report published earlier this month. A further search in December found a “small number” of classified records. A third batch of classified documents was discovered during a mid-January search of the Wilmington property by the president’s legal team.

The White House press shop has refused to answer reporters’ questions about why the president didn’t tell the American people about the document discoveries in the two months before the release of the White House report. CBS. Friday’s search of Biden’s home by DOJ officials, and the subsequent fourth tranche of classified materials being uncovered, comes after Jean-Pierre said searches at Biden’s residence were complete. It is unclear whether he was referring to the searches conducted by the president’s lawyers.

The situation has put Biden in an awkward political position. The president campaigned on promises of transparency and condemned former President Donald Trump for his mishandling of classified documents after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate last August. As he mulls a re-election bid and appears to be nearing an announcement, Biden faces the task of explaining to voters why his handling of classified information was better than Trump’s, who has already declared his candidacy in 2024.

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The White House and elected Democrats have been keen to highlight the differences between the Biden and Trump cases, including the number of documents obtained in each discovery, which was hundreds in Trump’s case and about 30 for Biden. Other key differences relate to how the documents were discovered and obtained, and the responses to the discoveries. Biden and his team have cooperated with the DOJ since they were notified of the documents in November, while the National Archives had tried unsuccessfully to retrieve hundreds of Trump records and eventually turned to the DOJ for help. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed separate special counsels to investigate both cases.

Biden has remained defiant on the matter, saying Thursday during a trip to California: “We are fully cooperating, we hope this is resolved quickly. I think you will find there is nothing. I have no regrets. I am following what they lawyers have told me they want me to do. That’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no ‘there’.”

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