WASHINGTON (AP) – The FBI searched United States (US) President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday and located additional documents with classified markings and also took possession of some of his handwritten notes, the president’s lawyer said on Saturday.
The president voluntarily allowed the FBI into his home, but the lack of a search warrant did not dim the extraordinary nature of the search.
It compounded the embarrassment to Biden that started with the disclosure on January 12 that the president’s attorneys had found a “small number” of classified records at a former office at the Penn Biden Centre in Washington shortly before the midterm elections.
Since then, attorneys found six classified documents in Biden’s Wilmington home library from his time as vice president.
Though Biden has maintained “there’s no there there”, the discoveries have become a political liability as he prepares to launch a re-election bid and they undercut his efforts to portray an image of propriety to the American public after the tumultuous presidency of his predecessor, Donald Trump.
During Friday’s search, which lasted nearly 13 hours, the FBI took six items that contained documents with classified markings, said the president’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer.
The items spanned Biden’s time in the Senate and the vice presidency, while the notes dated to his time as vice president, he said. The level of classification, and whether the documents removed by the FBI remained classified, was not immediately clear as the Department of Justice (DOJ) reviews the records.
Assistant US Attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick confirmed on Saturday that the FBI had executed “a planned, consensual search” of the president’s residence in Wilmington. The president and first lady Jill Biden were not at the home when it was searched.
They were spending the weekend at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Speaking to reporters during a trip to California on Thursday, Biden said he was “fully co-operating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly”.
“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden said.
“We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department.”
It remained to be seen whether additional searches by federal officials of other locations might be conducted.
