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FBI ALSO Searched Penn Biden Center in November After President’s Lawyers Found 10 Classified Documents: More Revelations Emerging Despite White House Claims of Transparency
- It is not known if any more classified documents were discovered in Biden’s former office.
- WH and DOJ did not initially disclose the search, despite claims of transparency
- House GOP now wants Penn Biden Center visitor records and details of its operations and funding
FBI investigators searched the office President Biden used to maintain at a DC think tank, days after his own lawyer identified classified material there, it was revealed Tuesday.
The White House and Justice Department did not disclose the search, which was reported by CBS Newsdespite the White House’s claim of “transparency” about continued discoveries of classified material.
It was not immediately known if any additional documents marked as classified were discovered during the search, which took place in mid-November.
On November 2, days before the midterm elections, a lawyer for Biden discovered 10 documents marked “classified,” then contacted the National Archives, which alerted the Justice Department.
News of the FBI search comes as the Biden administration faces renewed pressure from Democrats to reveal the contents of classified material found at his home and office.
FBI investigators searched Penn Biden’s office for classified material in November, it was revealed Tuesday.
A Jan. 14 statement from Biden’s attorney Bob Bauer did not acknowledge the government search, only noting the “government investigation, including taking possession of any documents and reviewing any surrounding material for further review and context.” “.
On Friday, January 20, the FBI searched Biden’s Wilmington home and discovered additional classified material.
Top Republicans have called on the government to search the president’s beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware, where Biden’s team says no classified documents were uncovered in their own search.
The White House had responded to questions last week about whether such a search could happen last weekend, when Biden was at Camp David and in Wilmington, but there is no indication that it happened.
“There has been no limit to transparency,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this month during a particularly spirited White House press conference.
The repeated disclosures come after months of reporting on former President Donald Trump’s own resistance to government demands to return documents, and the FBI’s discovery under a Mar-a-Lago search warrant of hundreds of marked documents. as “classified”.
The search of the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC came days after the discovery of the initial document.
The FBI conducted a search of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified materials were discovered in a garage and a private library.
The same garage houses Biden’s classic Corvette Stingray, along with some boxes and a lampshade.
The news broke when Biden visited New York to promote infrastructure improvements.
Biden has faced repeated questions about the documents, sometimes berating reporters, sometimes defending his conduct.
Former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod is among prominent Democrats who have criticized the Biden White House for a lack of transparency, in an op-ed in which he criticized the team for violating a crisis communications mantra to ‘fully disclose all the facts’ as soon as possible.
Bauer’s statement following the Wilmington search this month made it clear that the Justice Department was involved in the search.
DOJ “took possession of materials it deemed to be within the scope of its investigation, including six items consisting of documents with classification marks and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and others from his tenure as vice president,” Bauer said in a statement at the time. He said investigators also took handwritten notes from Biden’s time as vice president.