- DOJ officials conducted a search of Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday.
- Biden’s personal attorney said in a statement that “six items” with classified markings were found.
- Classified documents were previously found in Biden’s home and the Penn Biden Center think tank.
Justice Department officials found another set of classified documents in President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home after they conducted a search on Friday, according to a statement from Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer.
“Yesterday, DOJ complete a thorough search of all the materials in the President’s Wilmington home,” Bauer said in the statement. “It began at approximately 9:45 a.m. and concluded at around 10:30 p.m. and covered all working, living and storage spaces in the home.”
A statement from Biden’s special counsel, Richard Sauber, said Biden and the first lady were not present during the search.
Some of the items that were seized from the Wilmington home date back to Biden’s time in the Senate and as vice president, Bauer wrote. Personally handwritten notes from Biden’s vice-presidential tenure were also taken for the Justice Department’s review.
A set of classified documents was previously found at Biden’s Delaware home and at the president’s Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
Biden’s lawyers first discovered what was described as a “small number” of classified documents on November 2 as they were vacating the office space the president periodically used at the think tank between 2017 and the beginning of his 2020 presidential campaign.
The discovery led Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint US Attorney John Lausch, a Trump appointee, to conduct an initial investigation.
The president’s personal attorneys later disclosed to Lausch that they had found a second set of classified documents in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington home on December 20. Five more pages of classified information would also later be found in a storage room next to the garage.
The Biden Administration has been criticized for its decision to withhold the first discovery of classified documents from the public for more than two months, especially from Republican leaders who have had to defend the discovery of thousands of pages of official White House documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump, who is facing a separate DOJ investigation for his handling of classified records, called for the FBI to “raid” Biden’s home.
Biden’s team has made it a point to distinguish Trump’s case from the president’s.
While the FBI executed a search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in August after the National Archives spent more than a year requesting the return of hundreds of classified and sensitive documents, Sauber said in a prior statement that the president’s personal attorneys have been fully operating with the archives agency and the DOJ.
“As soon as his lawyers realized these documents were there, they did the right thing,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on January 11. “And they turned over the documents to the archivist.”
Bauer also said in the statement that Biden had voluntarily offered “prompt access to his home” for the DOJ to conduct an investigation.
