Biden FBI search: No classified documents found at president's beach house, lawyer says

Joe Biden at his home in Delaware on 8 July, 2022.

No classified documents were found during an FBI search of President Joe Biden's home in Rehoboth, Delaware, his lawyer says.

In a statement, Mr Biden's attorney said Wednesday's search was "planned" with the president's "full support".

The nearly four-hour search of the property related to a wider probe into the handling of classified documents.

The FBI has not commented on the search. As it was consensual, no search warrant was sought.

Mr Biden's lawyer, Bob Bauer, said the search was carried out "without advance public notice" in the interests of "operational security and integrity".

Following the search - which lasted from 08:30 to 12:00 local time - Mr Bauer said that "no documents with classified markings were found".

Some "materials and handwritten notes" that appear to date to Mr Biden's time as vice-president between 2009-17 were taken for "further review", Mr Bauer added.

The search is the latest in a series carried out at various locations, after classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center - an office space - in Washington DC in November. This was not made public at the time.

More documents were discovered at another of Mr Biden's homes in Wilmington, Delaware, in searches conducted in December and January.

The precise number of classified records recovered remains unclear - although at least a dozen were found during the January searches alone.

Mr Biden has said his team did "what they should have done" by alerting officials immediately, and that they are "co-operating fully and completely" with the investigation.

After the first of January's searches, Mr Biden told reporters the files were in a locked garage.

"It's not like they are sitting in the street," he said.

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The latest search comes a day after special counsel Robert Hur officially began his duties overseeing the probe into the documents.

President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Mike Pence have also been embroiled in controversy over the handling of classified documents.

In Mr Pence's case, a "small number of documents bearing classified markings" were found at his home in Carmel, Indiana, according to a letter sent to the National Archives by his lawyer. The documents were recovered by the FBI from a safe at the property on 19 January, with two boxes more delivered to the Archives on 23 January.

An August 2022 search of Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida uncovered dozens of boxes and about 11,000 documents, including about 100 with classified markings.

The search warrant came after attorneys representing Mr Trump had said all government records were returned. Mr Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and claimed that he had declassified the documents taken with him.

The document saga continues

The justice department search of Joe Biden's holiday home adds one more twist to a classified documents saga that has stretched on for nearly a month now and includes a special counsel overseeing the inquiry.

The FBI move could reveal how forthcoming and thorough the Biden team has been in reviewing the documents stored on his personal property. For the most part, the Biden lawyers have been conducting their own review of the president's personal residences without government investigators looking over their shoulders. While they found classified material at the president's Wilmington home, they have said that there were no such documents found at the president's beach house.

At the very least, the search will help quell some of the concerns expressed by Republicans that the government is holding Mr Biden to a lower level of scrutiny and suspicion than Donald Trump, who had his Mar-a-Lago estate searched by the FBI last August. When Mr Biden's lawyers first revealed they had found classified material at his home and personal office, the former president, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and other conservatives openly wondered why the current president wasn't targeted by government investigators as well.

Now, however, Mr Biden's defenders are pointing out that multiple Biden properties have been searched, but there is no indication that the FBI has investigated Mr Trump's New Jersey and New York homes.