President Joe Biden listens during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, USA, January 13, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
The White House confirmed Saturday that additional classified government documents were found at President Joe Biden’s Delaware home this week.
In a statement, White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber said a total of six pages of documents marked with classification marks were found at Biden’s Wilmington mansion. It said it only found the page.
Sauber said the first document was identified and turned over by Biden’s personal attorney on Wednesday, with five additional documents discovered later that week.
“The DOJ official who was with me got them right away,” he said in a statement.
Sauber said the president’s lawyers acted “immediately and voluntarily” to provide the documents to the Justice Department.
The disclosure of the latest findings comes days after Sauber confirmed media reports. The president’s attorneys found the first batch of classified documents from the Biden administration on Nov. 2 in an office that Biden used personally at a Washington think tank.
That comes after FBI agents raided former President Donald Trump’s Florida mansion and seized more than 100 classified government documents and hundreds of records that federal prosecutors claimed belonged to the U.S. government. It was almost three months later.
Trump has been the focus of a criminal investigation by the DOJ for removing records from the White House in January 2021.
Sauber said Thursday that a second document was found at Biden’s Delaware home. He issued a statement detailing how and where his second batch of documents was found, saying a “few” records with classified markings were found in a garage. rice field.
A second batch of documents was found in the garage of Biden’s Delaware residence on Dec. 20, according to a statement Saturday by Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer. That’s when I found an additional record in the room adjacent to the garage.
Mr. Bauer said Mr. Biden’s personal lawyers are trying to balance public transparency with the restrictions necessary to “protect the integrity of the investigation.”
Bauer says the attorney doesn’t have a security clearance, so he doesn’t know the exact number or content of the documents. He said when lawyers discovered documents with classified markings, they stopped, notified the government, and did not consider it.
“Adherence to this process means that any disclosure of a document is inconclusive until the government conducts an investigation. It involves researching the material,” said Bauer.
By law, government records must be turned over to the National Archives when the president or an official of his administration leaves office. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed former federal prosecutor Robert Herr as the special counsel to investigate the discovery of these classified records.
Harr is authorized to “investigate any person or entity that has violated the law in connection with this matter,” Garland said in a public statement made at the time of his appointment at the Justice Department.
Shortly after the second discovery, Biden discussed the documents with reporters.
“As I said earlier this week, by the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage, so it’s not like they’re sitting in the street,” Biden said, referring to the documents.
“People know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously. I also cooperated with the Department of Justice investigation and said I am cooperating fully,” Biden said.
