US authorities have found a new batch of classified documents at Joe Biden’s private residence, adding fuel to a growing political furore about the potential mishandling of sensitive government files.
Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney, in a statement on Saturday said the US Department of Justice found materials including six documents with classification markings in a search it carried out Friday at the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Bauer said the DoJ had “full access” to the residence, including memorabilia, handwritten notes, schedules and to-do lists. Some of the material now in the agency’s possession was from Biden’s time in the US Senate, and some of it from his tenure as Barack Obama’s vice-president, he added.
“[I]n the interest of moving the process forward as expeditiously as possible, we offered to provide prompt access to his home to allow DoJ to conduct a search of the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potential classified material,” Bauer said. Biden’s personal attorneys were “fully” co-operating with authorities, he added.
The new findings come less than two weeks after Merrick Garland, US attorney-general, appointed a special counsel to probe the potential mishandling of files, citing “extraordinary circumstances”. Robert Hur, a Washington-based lawyer and former federal prosecutor, was chosen for the role.
The DoJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Authorities had earlier found sensitive material at an office that had been used by Biden at the Penn Biden Center in Washington in November. Other documents were previously found at his private residence.
Richard Sauber, special counsel to Biden, said in a statement Saturday the president “has been committed to handling this responsibly because he takes this seriously.” Neither Biden nor his wife were present during the DoJ’s search of the Wilmington home, Sauber added.
Republicans have hammered Biden over the discoveries, as well as what they have described as a lack of transparency in disclosures about the documents. Republican leaders on the House judiciary committee have already launched an investigation into the matter.
It has cast a cloud over the White House as Biden gears up for an expected re-election bid in 2024, handing ammunition to Republicans and causing some unease among Democrats who had grown hopeful about their prospects of retaining the White House after a better than expected showing in the 2022 midterms.
Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, faces a criminal investigation into the handling of classified government files that were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in a raid by FBI agents last year. White House officials and Democrats have attempted to play down comparisons between the two probes, however, given Trump had refused to hand the material over, while Biden voluntarily disclosed the matter and documents were secured in national archives facilities.
Source link
Author:
