No classified documents were found when FBI agents searched President Joe Biden’s beach home on Feb. 1, according to a lawyer who represents the president.
“No documents with classified markings were found,” Bob Bauer, the lawyer, said in a statement to news outlets.
U.S. officials were at the Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, house from approximately 8:30 a.m. to noon, according to Bauer.
The FBI and its parent agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ), declined to comment.
Officials conducted the search “with the President’s full support and cooperation,” Bauer had said earlier.
“Under DOJ’s standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate,” Bauer added. “The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate. We will have further information at the conclusion of today’s search.”
Biden’s abode in Rehoboth Beach had not previously been searched, according to publicly available information.
Biden’s home in Wilmington, also in Delaware, was searched in January, according to the DOJ and Biden’s representatives. While there, agents took possession of various materials, including six items which consisted of documents with classification markings.
Those materials were not identified during a review by Biden’s team.
The saga started in 2022, when, according to the White House, lawyers representing the president who were packing up his former offices in Washington discovered classified materials there.
The revelation, not revealed to the public until after the New Year, triggered reviews at the Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach residences.
While multiple materials marked classified were found at the former, none were discovered at the latter, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, has said.
Biden and First Lady Jill Biden bought the six-bedroom home in 2017, local media reported.
The FBI reportedly searched the Penn Biden Center, where the initial tranche was located, shortly after the discovery. The bureau did not dispute the reports.
In Wilmington, agents spent about 13 hours searching and had access to every room, according to Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson.
“This was an unprecedented offer for DOJ to thoroughly search the personal family home of the President of the United States to ensure that any documents that should be in the possession of the government were in the possession of the government. And it reveals how seriously the President is taking this issue and how actively he is cooperating with the ongoing investigation,” Sams said in a press call.
The Department of Justice has described the Wilmington effort as a “planned, consensual search.”
Some of the documents Biden was holding date back to his time as vice president while others are from his time as a senator.
While presidents have the authority to declassify materials, vice presidents and senators do not.
Materials with classified markings have also been discovered at the home of former Vice President Mike Pence in Indiana and at former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida—including during the execution of a search warrant in 2022.
Pence has said the materials were “inadvertently” transported to his residence, while Trump has said he declassified the materials found at his resort.
Biden often retreats to one of his Delaware homes on weekends. He was at the Rehoboth Beach house as recently as Jan. 23.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, has appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate whether any person violated laws in the handling of the materials. Garland previously appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to probe Trump.
From The Epoch Times
