Chicago Sun-Times (Sunday)

CLASSIFIED DOCS

FBI searches Biden’s home for 13 hours, finds 6 additional documents

- BY ZEKE MILLER, MICHAEL BALSAMO AND COLLEEN LONG

WASHINGTON — The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday and located six additional documents containing classified markings and also took possession of some of his notes, the president’s lawyer said Saturday.

The president voluntaril­y allowed the FBI into his home, but the lack of a search warrant did not dim the extraordin­ary nature of the search. It compounded the embarrassm­ent to Biden that started with the disclosure Jan. 12 that the president’s attorneys had found a “small number” of classified records at a former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington shortly before the midterm elections. Since then, attorneys found six classified documents in Biden’s Wilmington home library from his time as vice president.

Though Biden has maintained “there’s no there there,” the discoverie­s have become a political liability as he prepares to launch a reelection bid, and they undercut his efforts to portray an image of propriety to the American public after the tumultuous presidency of his predecesso­r, Donald Trump.

The documents taken by the FBI spanned Biden’s time in the Senate and the vice presidency, while the notes dated to his time as vice president, said Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer. He added that the search of the entire premises lasted nearly 13 hours. The level of classifica­tion, and whether the documents removed by the FBI remained classified, was not immediatel­y clear as the Justice Department reviews the records.

“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden told reporters Thursday in California. “We immediatel­y turned them over to the Archives and the

Justice Department.”

Biden added that he was “fully cooperatin­g and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.”

The president and first lady Jill Biden were not at the home when it was searched. They were spending the weekend at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

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.

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.

Bauer said the FBI requested that the White House not comment on the search before it was conducted, and that Biden’s personal and White House attorneys were present. The FBI, he added, “had full access to the President’s home, including personally handwritte­n notes, files, papers, binders, memorabili­a, to-do lists, schedules, and reminders going back decades.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed former Maryland U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as a special counsel to investigat­e any potential wrongdoing surroundin­g the Biden documents. Hur is set to take over from the Trump-appointed Illinois U.S. Attorney John Lausch in overseeing the probe.

“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 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 — though questions about his transparen­cy with the public remain.

For a crime to have been committed, a person would have to “knowingly remove” the documents without authority and intend to keep them at an “unauthoriz­ed location.” Biden has said he was “surprised” that classified documents were uncovered at the Penn Biden Center.

 ?? AP PHOTOS ?? The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s home in Delaware on Friday and located six additional documents containing classified markings and also took possession of some of his notes, the president’s lawyer said Saturday.
AP PHOTOS The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s home in Delaware on Friday and located six additional documents containing classified markings and also took possession of some of his notes, the president’s lawyer said Saturday.

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