WASHINGTON (AP) – Attorneys for President Joe Biden have found more classified documents in his Wilmington, Delaware, home than previously known, the White House acknowledged Saturday.
White House Counsel Richard Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden’s private library. The White House had previously said that only a single page was found there.
The latest revelation adds to the discovery of documents found in December in Biden’s garage and in November in his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, when he was vice president. The apparent misuse of confidential documents and official Obama administration records is under investigation by a former US attorney, Robert Hur, who was appointed special counsel on Thursday by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Sauber said in a statement on Saturday that Biden’s personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped the search after finding the front page late on Wednesday. Sauber found the remaining material on Thursday while facilitating recovery by the Justice Department.
“While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material, bringing the total to six pages,” Sauber said. “The DOJ officers with me immediately took possession of them.”
Sauber previously said the White House was “confident that a full review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his attorneys acted promptly upon discovering this error.”
Sauber’s statement does not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting of the number of classified records. The White House already faces scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of the initial batch of documents in Biden’s office.
Asked on Thursday whether Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not turn up in a later search, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “You have to assume it’s completed, yes.”
Sauber reiterated on Saturday that the White House would cooperate with the Hur investigation.
Bob Bauer, the president’s personal counsel, said his legal team “has tried to balance the importance of public transparency, where appropriate, with established standards and limitations necessary to protect the integrity of the investigation.”
The Department of Justice has historically imposed a high legal bar before bringing criminal charges in cases involving the mishandling of classified information, with the requirement that someone had the intent to break the law rather than just being careless or negligent in doing so. . The primary statute governing the illegal removal and retention of classified documents makes it a crime to “knowingly” remove classified documents and store them in an unauthorized manner.
Circumstances involving Biden, at least so far known, differ from a separate investigation into the mishandling of confidential documents at former President Donald Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.
In Trump’s case, Special Counsel Jack Smith is looking into whether anyone tried to obstruct his investigation into the retention of classified records on the Palm Beach property. Justice Department officials said Trump representatives failed to fully comply with a subpoena asking for the return of classified records, prompting agents to return to the home with a search warrant so they could collect additional materials.
Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
