WASHINGTON: The American federal police conducted a search on Wednesday of Joe Biden’s seaside residence in Rehoboth (Delaware, east) without finding any classified document, the president’s personal lawyer announced.
After 3:30 of research, “no document bearing mention of classification was found”, indicated Bob Bauer in a press release at midday.
He adds, however, that the investigators “took away certain documents and handwritten notes which seem to date back to the time of his vice-presidency, in order to review them”.
At the start of the day, the Democratic president’s personal lawyer announced that his client’s residence was being searched by the FBI, and that Joe Biden was cooperating “fully” with the latter.
“For security and procedural reasons, (the FBI) wanted to proceed with this action without prior public communication and we have decided to cooperate,” he said.
Federal police had previously previously searched another Joe Biden home in Delaware, located in the city of Wilmington, for confidential documents dating from the 80-year-old Democrat’s former roles as vice president and senator.
The president most often spends his weekends either in Wilmington or, less regularly, in Rehoboth.
Since last November, a series of confidential documents, the exact number and content of which remain unknown to this day, have been found either in an office occupied by Joe Biden in a Washington think tank, or in the house of Wilmington.
These documents date back to Joe Biden’s vice presidency (2009-2017) and his three decades in the Senate, during which he dealt extensively with foreign policy.
The Department of Justice has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate these discoveries, embarrassing for the Democratic president because they evoke, despite many differences, a case of official archives taken to Florida by his predecessor Donald Trump.
United States law requires presidents and vice presidents to transfer all of their official documents, communications, and other memoranda to the National Archives.
Donald Trump’s former vice-president, the very conservative Mike Pence, also revealed at the end of January that a “small number of documents marked ‘confidential'” had been discovered in his residence.