The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday and found additional classified materials, according to a lawyer for the president in a statement released Saturday night.
Summary
The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday and found additional classified materials, according to a lawyer for the president in a statement released Saturday night.
- The search uncovered six more items which included documents with classified markings and “surrounding materials” that dated from President Biden’s tenure in the U.S. Senate. Biden served as Senator for Delaware from 1973 until he resigned in 2009 after being elected vice president.
- The president’s lawyer Bob Bauer disclosed “personally handwritten notes” were also taken by FBI investigators. These discoveries are the fourth batch of classified documents uncovered at a location connected to President Biden after documents were first found on Nov. 2 at the Penn Biden Center.
- A second batch was uncovered in Biden’s garage on Dec. 20 and a third in his house on Jan. 12.
- The president allowed the FBI to search his home without having to obtain a search warrant, but the spectacle of his home being searched by law enforcement is sure to weigh on the president’s expected 2024 reelection campaign.
- Senior Democrats criticized the president on the Sunday news shows. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, told CNN Biden should be “embarrassed by the situation.” Biden “should have a lot of regrets,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who criticized both Biden and former president Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents.
- Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called the president a “serial classified document hoarder” in an interview with CBS News. Turner asked, “Why did he have these? Who did he show them to?”
- On Thursday, President Biden said he had “no regrets” about keeping the discovery of classified documents at his former office hidden from the public until after the midterm elections. Biden insisted, “There’s no there there.”
- The New York Times wrote the search “dramatically escalated the legal and political situation for the president” and “in some ways resembled the extensive search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last summer.”
- CNN noted the search of Biden’s home was overseen by the office of US Attorney John Lausch of Illinois, who was in charge of the initial Justice Department review of the classified documents found at Biden’s office last December. Lausch is overseeing the investigation until newly appointed special counsel Robert Hur takes over the probe “shortly.”
- CBS News reported the Justice Department is considering searches of more locations linked to Biden after the discoveries of an estimated 25-30 classified documents in four separate locations in Biden’s home and former office.
- National Review compared the FBI’s treatment of Biden with what happens when a “regular guy” mishandles classified information. The author cited several cases where lower-level officials have received years in prison for similar offenses.
- The Washington Examiner picked up comments from Rep. Mike Turner lambasting the FBI’s classified documents probe for looking “more like a cover-up than an investigation.”
- The Wall Street Journal reported the search lasted from around 9:45 am until approximately 10:30 pm, and members of Biden’s personal legal team and staffers at the White House Counsel’s Officer were present throughout the search.
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© Dominic Moore, 2023
