US President Joe Biden’s home has been searched for several classified documents and handwritten notes.The FBI searched Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday & located additional documents with classified markings & also took possession of some of his handwritten notes, the President’s lawyer said on Saturday.
The remarkable search of a sitting president’s home by federal agents – at the invitation of Biden’s lawyers- escalated the legal & political situation for the president, the latest in a series of discoveries that have already led to a special counsel investigation.
During Friday‘s search, six more items with classified markings – including some documents from his time as a senator & others from his time as the Vice President- were taken by investigators, according to the statement from Bob Bauer, Biden’s lawyer.
Bauer didn’t indicate what had prompted the search, saying the lawyers had offered to provide access for a search. Biden‘s personal & White House lawyers were present at the time. He said the justice department had requested the search not be made public before being conducted.
The search underscored the seriousness of the investigation into Biden‘s handling of documents, while not a surprise raid, in some ways, resembled the extensive search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last summer, with agents looking for classified documents they believed were in Trump’s possession.
The results of Friday‘s search follow a series of discoveries by the president’s own lawyers of classified documents at the president’s Wilmington home & the Washington office Biden used before moving into the White House. The lawyers quickly turned the documents over to the National Archives &, later to the justice department.
Biden didn‘t reveal the discovery of some of those documents for two months, after initially finding them on November 2. He has said it would eventually be revealed that he did nothing wrong there., Joe Biden told reporters on Thursday.
Generally, classified documents are to be declassified after a maximum of 25 years. But some records are of such value they remain classified for far longer, though specific exceptions must be granted. Biden served in the Senate from 1973 to 2009.
Trump possibly faces exposure for obstruction over the protracted battle to retrieve the hundreds of documents, marked as classified, found from Mar-a-Lago, the Florida residence of the former president. And since he’s no longer in office, he wouldn’t be protected from possible prosecution that would apply to a sitting president.
