Biden’s lawyers said last month that they had not found any classified documents after their search of Biden’s Rehoboth Beach home, and Bauer confirmed that authorities had not found any classified documents on Wednesday. But Bauer said officials took some documents from the home.
“Concurrent with the action in Wilmington, DOJ further reviewed certain materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as vice president,” Bauer said.
Wednesday’s search was part of an accelerated probe that the Justice Department launched in November after Biden’s personal lawyers found classified documents in the office of the Washington think tank he served as vice president. Was used after giving. A subsequent search of Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home turned up more classified material.
After John R. Lausch, a U.S. attorney in Chicago, and the Trump administration’s holdover recommendation, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Herr as a special counsel to oversee the investigation. The Justice Department confirmed that Wednesday was Hoor’s first day as special counsel. A spokesman for the department declined to comment further.
The department updated its website Wednesday morning to note that Horr is the special counsel leading the day-to-day operations of the Biden investigation.
The Justice Department’s search of Biden’s vacation home comes after the FBI spent nearly 13 hours searching the president’s Wilmington residence last month. Bauer said in a statement after the search that agents found additional classified documents, some from his tenure in the U.S. Senate and others from his eight-year term as vice president.
Biden’s lawyers have tried to downplay the investigation, suggesting that a small number of documents were inadvertently withheld, and the president has said he has “no regrets” that the White House How disclosure of confidential documents is handled.
“I think you’ll find there’s nothing there,” Biden said.
The Bidens purchased a $2.7 million, 4,800-square-foot Rehoboth Beach vacation home in June 2017, and have spent many weekends there during their presidency. The president last stayed there the weekend of Jan. 21, when the FBI searched his Wilmington residence.
The only other known location where Biden’s papers may be stored is at his alma mater, the University of Delaware. In 2012, Biden donated an extensive collection of papers from his 36-year career in the Senate. The collection filled 1,875 boxes and contained 415 gigabytes of electronic records, including committee reports, legislative drafts, and correspondence.
A university spokeswoman told The Washington Post on Jan. 11, after news broke about the discovery of the first batch of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center, that the university had not been asked to conduct any searches of its collection. Spokesman Peter Botham has not responded to repeated requests for comment in recent weeks, including after a search of Biden’s home revealed years of classified Senate documents.
Hur’s investigation will proceed separately from the long-running investigation into former President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Florida home.
In November, Garland tasked veteran federal prosecutor Jack Smith with overseeing the day-to-day operations of the criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left the White House. Smith is also managing the aspects of the Justice Department’s investigation into the events leading up to the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol that are most closely related to Trump.
So far, there appear to be initial differences between the Trump and Biden dossier investigations. The FBI eventually recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, according to government court filings. It’s less clear how many documents have been discovered on Biden’s properties, and what level of classification they are marked with.
While Biden’s team says it has voluntarily returned the discovered material to the government, Trump appears to have resisted government efforts to obtain official documents for months, including a grand jury. including after requesting the return of any material by
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