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Lawyers for US President Joe Biden found more classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Del., than ever before, the White House admitted on Saturday.
White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden’s personal library. The White House has previously said only one page was found there.
The latest disclosures are in addition to the discovery of documents found in December in Biden’s garage and in November in his former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, since becoming vice president. The apparent mishandling of classified documents and official records of the Obama administration is being investigated by former US attorney Robert Hur, who was appointed as special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Sauber said in a statement on Saturday that Biden’s personal lawyer, who did not have a security clearance, stopped the search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber discovered the remaining material on Thursday, as he facilitated its retrieval by the Department of Justice.
“When I transferred it to the DOJ official who accompanied me, five additional pages with classified markings were found among the material, for a total of six pages,” said Sauber. “The DOJ officials and I took them immediately.”
Sauber has previously said that the White House is “confident that a full review will show that the document was inadvertently included, and that the president and attorneys acted quickly upon discovering this error.”
Delay in acknowledging the documents in question
Sauber’s statement did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting of the number of secret document records. The White House has faced scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of an initial batch of documents in Biden’s office.
On Thursday, asked if Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not be sought again, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “You have to assume it’s over, yes.”
Sauber reiterated Saturday that the White House would cooperate with the Hur investigation.
Former National Security Council member Javed Ali explains the second batch of classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del., and what the special counsel might have done.
Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, said his legal team “attempts to balance the importance of public transparency with the established norms and limits necessary to protect the integrity of the investigation.”
The Department of Justice historically imposes a high legal bar before bringing criminal charges in cases involving the mishandling of classified information, with the requirement that people intend to violate the law as opposed to those who are just careless or negligent in doing so.
The primary law governing the unauthorized removal and storage of classified documents makes it a crime to “knowingly” remove a classified document and store it in an unauthorized manner.
The situation involving Biden, at least as far as it is known, is different from a separate investigation into one of the classified documents at the club and private residence of former president Donald Trump in Florida.
In the Trump case, special counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether anyone sought to obstruct the investigation into the retention of secret records at his Palm Beach estate. Justice Department officials said Trump representatives failed to comply with subpoenas demanding the return of classified records, prompting agents to return to the home with search warrants to gather additional material.
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