The White House was coy about the search of Biden’s home for classified documents, while federal investigators searched the house on Friday.
The Justice Department found and seized half a dozen documents marked classified and some of Biden’s notes in the Wilmington home during a search that lasted 13 hours, the president’s personal attorney revealed Friday.
Neither Biden nor Jill Biden were present at the investigation, but they may have already been in the state — they would be spending a few days at their Rehoboth Beach home, 90 miles from where investigators were scouring.
The White House had been elusive on Friday about why the president spent a winter weekend at the beach house when the forecast called for cold and wet conditions with temperatures in the mid-40s.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer whether the trip was related to the brewing of classified equipment scandal — White House staff discovered several classified documents in the Wilmington garage in December and others in an old Biden office in November.
“Because it relates specifically to the investigation, I would refer you to the Department of Justice, so I’m not going to comment on that piece at all from here,” Jean-Pierre said on Friday.
“In terms of his travels, as you know, he often travels to Delaware on weekends. I have nothing else to share.”
It appears that detectives searched “all work, living and storage areas in the house” while Jean-Pierre was at the White House to evade questioning, according to a statement from Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer.
Bauer explained that the DOJ had asked that Friday’s search be kept secret from the public until after it was completed, but Jean-Pierre’s evasion wouldn’t mark the first time Biden’s team had leaked information about the discoveries from classified documents. kept hidden.
Biden admitted in January that the first pile of classified material illegally found in his possession was discovered in November, just six days before the midterm elections. The documents were found in a DC office Biden used after he left the Obama administration, but the president kept the dig a secret until the news broke this month.
In December, several more were found in his garage in Wilmington, stored next to Biden’s prized Corvette, prompting Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint Special Prosecutor Robert Hur to investigate Biden’s mishandling of the classified materials.
“I don’t regret it,” Biden told reporters Thursday, just a day before the FBI found six additional materials, spanning his time in the Senate and during his vice presidency, stashed in the home.
Biden said he had “no regrets” for keeping the scandal a secret.
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Biden previously berated former President Donald Trump for committing the same crime.
In a September interview, Biden said Trump was “totally irresponsible in bringing records from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2021.
