The White House said lawyers found a small cache of classified documents at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
A single document was found in a room adjoining the garage, and no documents were found at the Biden home in Rehoboth Beach, White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber said in a statement. He said the administration is “fully cooperating” to ensure records are handled properly.
Richard Sauber, special adviser to the president, said after Biden’s lawyers found the original documents, they looked into other places where the documents could have been sent after Biden stepped down as vice president in 2017.
Sauber said a “small number” of classified documents were found in a warehouse in Biden’s garage in Wilmington, with one copy in an adjacent room. The White House did not say when the subsequent search began or when additional documents were found, only that the investigation was completed on Wednesday evening.
Sauber said the Justice Department was “immediately notified” after the documents were discovered and that the department’s lawyers took custody of the records.
Regardless of the Justice Department’s review, the revelation that Biden was potentially mishandling classified or presidential records appeared to be “irresponsible” for keeping hundreds of such records in his private club in Florida.
Earlier this week, the White House confirmed that the agency had examined “a small number of classified documents” found in the Washington office. Biden’s lawyers discovered the materials in the Pennsylvania Biden Center office and then immediately contacted the National Archives, the White House said. Biden retained office there after he stepped down as vice president in 2017 and shortly before he launched his Democratic presidential campaign in 2019.
The report that Biden’s team had discovered additional classified documents came hours after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged questions about Biden’s handling of classified information and how the West Wing investigated the discovery.
On Wednesday, she said the White House intends to “get it right” on the matter, pointing to Biden’s personal attorneys notifying the National Archives immediately.
But she declined to say when Biden himself was briefed, whether there were still classified documents potentially in other unauthorized locations, or why the White House waited more than two months to reveal the discovery of the original batch of documents. They were found on November 2, a few days before the midterm elections.
“As my colleagues at the legal adviser said yesterday and told all of you, this is an ongoing process under the supervision of the Department of Justice. Therefore, we will be limited in what we can say here,” said Jean-Pierre.
The Justice Department is investigating records found at the Penn Biden Center. Attorney General Merrick Garland has asked John Lausch, U.S. Attorney for Chicago, to look into the matter, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press (AP) this week. This person was also not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Lausch is one of the few U.S. lawyers the Trump administration has kept.
Biden said he was “surprised to learn that there were any government documents that were delivered there to this office,” but his lawyers “did what they had to do” when they called the National Archives immediately.
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee demanded that intelligence agencies conduct a “damage assessment” of potentially classified documents.
The revelation could also make it harder for the Justice Department to consider filing charges against Trump. The Republican is trying to reclaim the White House in 2024 and has repeatedly said that the agency’s investigation into his conduct amounted to “corruption.”
There are significant differences between the Trump and Biden situations, including the severity of the ongoing grand jury investigation into Mar-a-Lago.
