More classified documents found at Joe Biden Delaware home: White House

White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden’s private library.

Sauber said in a statement Saturday that Biden’s personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped their search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber found the remaining material Thursday, as he was facilitating their retrieval by the Department of Justice.

“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. “The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.”

The latest disclosure is in addition to the Biden’s legal team discovered a set of classified documents from his time as vice president at a storage space in the garage of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, Reuters had reported quoting the White House on 12 January. 

Prior to this, documents were found in December in Biden’s garage and in November at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, from his time as vice president. 

The apparent mishandling of classified documents and official records from the Obama administration are under investigation by a former U.S. attorney, Robert Hur, who was appointed as a special counsel on Thursday by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Sauber has previously said that the White House was “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”

Sauber’s statement did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting of the number of classified documents records. The White House is already facing scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of the initial group of documents at the Biden office.

On Thursday, asked whether Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not turn up in a further search, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “You should assume that it’s been completed, yes.”

Republicans in the US House of Representatives launched an investigation on Friday into the Justice Department’s handling of improperly stored classified documents possessed by Biden, and questioned whether his son, Hunter, had access to any.

Republicans have sought to compare the investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents to the ongoing probe into how former President Donald Trump handled classified documents after his presidency.

The White House, however, says the two cases are different because Biden’s team has cooperated with authorities in their probe and had turned over those documents. Trump had resisted doing so until an August FBI search at his Florida home.

Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal lawyer, said in a statement that Biden had directed his personal attorneys to be “forthcoming and fully cooperative with the National Archives and Records Administration and the Justice Department regarding the documents.

“In addition, the president’s personal attorneys have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity. These considerations require avoiding the public release of detail relevant to the investigation while it is ongoing,” he said.

(With inputs from agencies)