FBI agents reported they found no new classified documents in a search Wednesday at U.S. President Joe Biden’s vacation retreat in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, his personal lawyer said, although they did take some materials for further review.
The attorney, Bob Bauer, said in a statement the search at the blue-and-white three-story home lasted from 8:30 a.m. to noon in "coordination and cooperation with the president's attorneys" and had been planned.
"No documents with classified markings were found," Bauer said. He added, however, that as happened during a search last month at Biden’s primary private residence in Wilmington, Delaware, agents retrieved some materials and handwritten notes that appeared to relate to his time as vice president that ended in early 2017.
Bauer said earlier that under the Department of Justice’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. The search [Wednesday] is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate.”
The search at the home near the Atlantic Ocean followed earlier ones in which Biden aides late last year found a collection of documents with classified markings at a Washington research organization, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, where Biden occasionally worked after his vice presidential term ended, and at his primary private residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
The White House said at the time that no more classified documents were found at the Rehoboth Beach home.
The FBI’s search of the vacation property came after an intensive, 13-hour search on January 20 at the Wilmington residence, where agents found documents with classified markings and took possession of some of Biden’s handwritten notes.
Altogether, some 20 or more classified documents have been recovered by Biden’s lawyers or the FBI agents at the Washington office and Wilmington home.
The January search came after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named a career prosecutor, Robert Hur, to investigate Biden’s handling of the classified material, months after naming another prosecutor, Jack Smith, to investigate about 320 documents with classified markings found at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Atlantic Ocean retreat in Florida.
Last month, Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, said some classified material had been found at his home in Indiana.
Under U.S. law, all three officials were required to turn over the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration when their terms in office ended.
Biden and his lawyers have sought to downplay the probe, suggesting that a small number of documents had been retained inadvertently. But the fact that some documents were found at properties linked to him has stripped him of a political talking point against Trump’s handling of documents related to his presidency, which Biden had assailed as “irresponsible.”
Trump has already declared his 2024 presidential candidacy, and Biden says he plans to seek a second term, which could lead to another contest between the two men after Biden defeated him in 2020.
Trump only reluctantly turned over dozens of documents after taking them to Mar-a-Lago when he left office two years ago, eventually forcing the government to secure a warrant for a court-approved search because it suspected Trump had not turned over all the materials in his possession. Agents recovered about 100 more in a search last August.
