FBI searches Biden beach home for classified documents
WASHINGTON — FBI agents searched President Biden’s Delaware vacation house Wednesday for improperly stored classified documents as part of a broadening investigation.
The search of the Rehoboth Beach home comes 12 days after the FBI searched Biden’s other Delaware residence— in Wilmington — and found sensitive records from his vice presidency and Senate years.
Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, said the “planned search” was done with the president’s “full support and cooperation” from 8:30 a.m. until noon and that “[n]o documents with classified markings were found.”
However, Bauer added that “[c]onsistent with the process in Wilmington, the [Justice Department] took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President.”
Bauer earlier said “[t]he search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate.”
White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a Jan. 12 statement that Biden’s team did its own search and that “[n]o documents were found in the Rehoboth Beach residence.”
However, Sauber also said no other sensitive records were at the president’s Wilmington home — before the FBI on Jan. 20 found an unspecified number of additional materials.
Special counsel Robert Hur is investigating whether Biden or anyone in his orbit illegally mishandled classified documents dating to before he took office as president.
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Biden most recently visited Rehoboth the weekend of Jan. 20-23 — apparently avoiding his “weekend White House” in Wilmington due to the ongoing search there.
Both of Biden’s Delaware homes lacked Secret Service protection for several months following his vice presidency — leaving any sensitive records vulnerable to intruders, as well as unattended guests.
Biden acknowledged Jan. 12 that some classified records were found next to his classic Corvette in his Wilmington garage, but defended his handling of those documents.
“My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” he said at the time.
First son Hunter Biden, who is under investigation by the US attorney’s office in Delaware for possible tax fraud and illegal foreign lobbying, among other crimes, frequently visited the Wilmington house — and even listed it as his residence on a 2018 form — while records were stashed there and as he pursued business interests around the world, including in China.
CBS reported Tuesday that the FBI quietly searched Biden’s post-vice presidency office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington in mid-November after the reported Nov. 2 discovery by Biden’s lawyers of classified documents in an abandoned office space.
The White House concealed the discovery until well after the Nov. 8 midterm elections, in which former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of records was a major issue following an Aug. 8 FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
Biden first publicly acknowledged the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center at a Jan. 10 press conference in Mexico City — after CBS broke the story one day prior. But in those remarks, he didn’t admit that a second cache of classified documents found in the Wilmington garage was reported to the Justice Department by his lawyers on Dec. 20,
Several subsequent searches of Biden’s Wilmington home, including the Jan. 20 FBI visit, turned up additional classified documents dating to Biden’s vice presidency and Senate years.
The 80-year-old president, who in September slammed his predecessor as “irresponsible” for retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, has lashed out at questions about the controversy.
“There is no there there,” Biden told reporters during a trip to California Jan. 19.
It’s unclear how many documents have been retrieved thus far. CNN reported that around 10 classified documents, some marked “top secret,” were found at the Penn Biden Center relating to the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Iran.
Republicans are clamoring for additional searches, including of the roughly 1,850 boxes of Biden’s Senate papers held at the University of Delaware.
