FBI raids beach house of US President Joe Biden, but finds no classified documents | Abroad

The agents arrived at Biden’s beach house in Rehoboth on Wednesday morning. The Justice Department was already investigating classified documents in a private office of Biden in Washington and also at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. The FBI found documents there that should not be in the president’s private quarters.

Biden bought the beach house after his time as Vice President under Barack Obama (2009-2017). He occasionally spends weekends there with his wife Jill, most recently during the weekend of January 20-23. According to attorney Bob Bauer, the president cooperated fully with the operation of investigators from the US Department of Justice in Delaware.

Bauer has previously said that on Jan. 11, the president’s personal attorneys searched Rehoboth’s home and Wilmington residence. While those Wilmington attorneys found classified documents, the search in Rehoboth turned up no such documents, Bauer reports.

The “planned” search, the lawyer said, would be part of the investigation into Biden’s handling of confidential documents. The previously found records date from the period when Biden was Vice President of the United States under Barack Obama (2009 to 2017). The exact number of classified documents recovered remains unclear, though at least a dozen were discovered during the January searches alone.

A first set of documents was discovered as early as November. Attorney General Merrick Garland also appointed special counsel last month to oversee the investigation of the Biden documents. It was the same Garland who appointed another counsel last year to investigate the discovery of classified documents at Donald Trump’s Florida residence.

The revelations about Biden came after he had strongly criticized his predecessor Donald Trump, with whom secret documents were also found, albeit on a larger scale. And in January it also became known that his vice president Mike Pence also has confidential documents in his possession. These are documents that should have been returned to the National Archives. In the meantime, there is also increasing criticism of the way in which the US administration handles its confidential documents.