U.S. President Joe Biden listens during a meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 13, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Additional classified government documents were found at President Joe Biden‘s Delaware home this week, the White House confirmed Saturday.
In a statement, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the President, said that a total of six pages of documents with classification markings were discovered at Biden’s Wilmington residence. The first document was identified on Wednesday by Biden’s personal lawyer and turned over, and the additional five documents were discovered later that week, Sauber said.
“The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them,” he said in the statement.
Sauber said the President’s lawyers have acted “immediately and voluntarily” to provide the documents to the Department of Justice.
Biden’s attorney Bob Bauer said in a statement Saturday that the President’s personal attorneys are working to balance public transparency and the limitations necessary to “protect the investigation’s integrity.”
Bauer said the attorneys do not have security clearances, which means they are not aware of the exact number of documents or their content. He said that when an attorney discovered a document with classified markings, they stopped, notified the government, and did not review it.
“Adhering to this process means that any disclosure regarding documents cannot be conclusive until the government has conducted its inquiry, including taking possession of any documents and reviewing any surrounding material for further review and context,” Bauer said.
The disclosure of that latest discovery comes days after Sauber confirmed media reports that attorneys for the president found an initial batch of classified documents from the Biden administration on Nov. 2 in an office that Biden had used as a private citizen at a Washington think tank.
That was nearly three months after FBI agents raided the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump and seized more than 100 classified government documents and hundreds of more records that federal prosecutors say belong to the U.S. government.
Trump is the focus of a criminal probe by the DOJ for his removal of the records from the White House in January 2021.
Sauber disclosed Thursday that a second batch of documents had been found in Biden’s Delaware home. He issued a statement detailing how and where the second batch of documents was found and said a “small number” of records with classified markings were found in the garage.
By law, government records must be given to the National Archives when a president or officials in their administration leave office.
Soon after the second discovery, Biden talked about the documents with reporters.
“As I said earlier this week, and by the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage, so it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden said, referring to the documents.
“People know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously,” Biden said. “I also said we’re cooperating, fully cooperated with the Justice Department’s review.”
