White House reveals more documents were discovered at Biden’s Delaware home
Ryan King
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Additional pages with classified markings were unearthed from President Joe Biden’s Delaware residence this week, the White House announced Saturday.
Biden’s personal attorneys flagged “one document with a classified marking” Wednesday and immediately halted their search of that area in his residency due to concerns about their lack of credentials. From there, White House counsel Richard Sauber traveled to the site with Justice Department officials Thursday and uncovered five additional pages of materials with classified markings.
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“Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday evening to facilitate providing the document the President’s personal counsel found on Wednesday to the Justice Department. While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,” Sauber said in a statement.
Attorney General Merrick Garland disclosed earlier in the week that “an additional document bearing classified markings was identified at the president’s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware,” but he declined to elaborate on specifics while announcing the appointment of U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to serve as special counsel in the matter.
This follows two other batches of classified document discoveries stemming from his vice presidency days. The first came on Nov. 2 of last year, when a Biden lawyer was cleaning out a closet in the president’s old office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a foreign policy-focused think tank in Washington. Roughly 10 documents with intelligence about Iran, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom dated from 2013 to 2016 were discovered.
That initial trove reportedly included “sensitive compartmented information” and top secret material, which can pose “exceptionally grave damage” to national security if mishandled. Biden’s team then informed the National Archives and Records Administration, which in turn apprised the DOJ. His lawyers then conducted a search of the president’s personal Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, residences.
On Dec. 20, Biden’s team informed the DOJ that it found fewer than 10 files with classified markings in his Wilmington garage near his prized 1967 Corvette Stingray. The search in Rehoboth Beach has so far not yielded any additional outstanding material. The White House disclosed the findings this week in response to a media report earlier in January.
“President Biden’s personal attorneys have followed a process, coordinated with the Archives and the Department of Justice, to review documents at the Penn Biden Center and the President’s Delaware residences. The President’s personal attorneys conducting the searches do not have active security clearances,” Sauber added.
Sauber also indicated that he would start directing questions to the special counsel’s office moving forward. Biden has maintained that he is “cooperating fully” with the proper authorities. Some of his associates have reportedly been interviewed by federal investigators. Presidents and vice presidents are required to relinquish presidential documents to the National Archives at the conclusion of an administration, in keeping with the Presidential Records Act.
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Biden returned to Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday for the weekend. He has hired former Obama administration official and lawyer Bob Bauer to assist in his correspondence with the DOJ. His predecessor, former President Donald Trump, is also mired in controversy over classified documents. Over 300 documents marked classified, including ones with top secret labels, were confiscated from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last year.
Special counsel Jack Smith is spearheading a DOJ review of the Trump matter, which the former president has chastised as a “giant scam.” Trump has also denied wrongdoing, claiming to have declassified the materials and noted that Biden did not have declassification powers over the documents in question because he was a vice president at the time.