U.S. President Joe Biden speaks as he welcomes bipartisan mayors attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2023.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | beautiful pictures
A new search of President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, by Justice Department agencies lasting more than 12 hours on Friday found six more documents marked confidential, personal attorneys the president said in a statement Saturday night.
According to his attorney, Bob Bauer, some of the classified documents and “around documents” date back to Biden’s tenure in the Senate, where he represented Delaware from 1973 to 2009.
And “some” of the documents are from his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, from 2009 to 2017, Bauer said.
The DOJ also recorded several notes that Biden personally handwritten as vice president, according to the attorney.
The documents, along with a group of other classified government files, were discovered earlier this month at Biden’s Wilmington mansion and in November in a private office he maintains at a research institute in Washington, DC following the end of his term as vice president in the Obama administration in 2017.
The White House said documents discovered prior to Friday’s DOJ search were all found by Biden’s attorneys.
Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s retention of government records after he served as vice president.
Former President Donald Trump is under criminal investigation by another special counsel for taking hundreds of classified files and other government documents from the White House when he left office.
By law, the president and vice president must return government documents to the National Archives and Records Administration when they leave office.
Bauer, in his statement Saturday said the president’s legal team had offered to provide “immediate access” to Biden’s private residence “to allow the DOJ to conduct a full search of the facility.” facility to find potential vice president records and potential classified documents.” Bauer said that offer was made “in the interest of moving the process forward as quickly as possible.”
“The DOJ requested that the search not be made public in advance, according to its standard procedures, and we agreed to cooperate,” Bauer said.
He said that on Friday, “the DOJ completed a thorough search of all documents in the President’s home in Wilmington.”
“It started around 9:45 a.m. and ended around 10:30 p.m. and covered all the workspaces, living spaces and storage spaces in the home,” says Bauer. “In agreement with the DOJ, representatives from both the individual legal team and the White House Attorney’s Office were present.”
The DOJ has “full access to the President’s home,” including “personal handwritten notes, files, papers, file covers, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules, and reminders from multiple decades ago.”
“The DOJ was in possession of documents it deems to be the scope of its investigation, including six items including classified documents and surrounding materials, some of which were from the service of President in the Senate and some of that is from his tenure as Vice President,” Bauer said.
“The DOJ also considered adding personal handwritten notes from his years as vice president.”
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