The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s Delaware beach home Wednesday amid the 46th president’s ongoing documents scandal.
FBI officials said the search uncovered no new classified documents, but government watchdogs are calling on the Justice Department to widen its net amid concerns the Biden administration has been less than forthright about the records quest thus far.
Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney, did acknowledge the FBI seized hand-written notes and other materials from the president’s Rehoboth Beach, DE, home in the three-and-a-half hour search.
Bauer claimed the records check was conducted with the cooperation of the president’s attorneys.
“The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate,” the attorney said in a statement.
Paul Kamenar, counsel for the National Legal and Policy Center, called balderdash. Kamenar, a longtime fixture of the Washington, DC legal community, said in cases like Biden’s, with a special counsel now involved, the FBI offers a choice: Cooperate or face a warrant. The latter option, Kamenar said, would be bad politics for an unpopular president who has been less than forthright about the extent of classified records in his possession.
“The White House is continuing to obfuscate what is going out. All of this stuff is coming out in drips,” the legal expert said.
The FBI’s search of Biden’s vacation home Wednesday marked the latest law enforcement sweep of locations linked to Biden in the probe into the handling of classified documents.
On Nov. 2, the president’s attorneys reportedly discovered a “small number” of classified records at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement, Biden’s former office after his tenure as vice president.
His attorneys also disclosed that a “small number” of official documents were found in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington home. An FBI search of the home on Jan. 20 uncovered six additional records with classified markings, according to the Justice Department.
Curiously, it was confirmed this week the FBI conducted a search of the Penn Biden Center office in mid-November, after the president’s attorneys had discovered the first round of documents. It’s not clear what, if anything, the FBI found in that search.
Kamenar said the follow-up searches by FBI investigators suggests a lack of trust in the word of the president.
“His personal attorneys keep making up different stories about what’s going on. They didn’t let us know that (the FBI) had searched the Biden Center in mid-November,” he said. “The FBI obviously doesn’t trust their stories.”
Watchdog organizations like the National Legal and Policy Center have called on Robert Hur, special counsel in the Biden documents probe, to expand the documents dragnet.
Kamenar said the FBI needs to search the entire 14,000-square-foot Penn Biden Center, as well as the University of Delaware where some 1800 boxes of Biden’s Senate records are stored. He said “that’s the next shoe to drop.”
The National Legal and Policy Center is still waiting on notice from the Department of Justice on itsFreedom of Information Act request seeking to learn how classified records from the Obama-Biden administration ended up at the shadowy Biden Center, as well as Biden’s home. Kamenar said he’s been told the records request has been expedited
Meanwhile, DOJ will not provide the brunt of information related to the special counsel investigation that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has requested until the probe is finished, CNN reported earlier this week.
Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has demanded access to a host of documents, with the Republican-controlled House focusing on the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation.
Jordan told CNN the committee is “definitely looking at asking for documents via subpoena. But we don’t know whether that will happen yet.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
