The FBI Wednesday found no classified documents after searching President Biden’s Delaware beach home in the latest sign that the troubling issue is not over yet.
The federal agents scuttled in and out of the home using black sport utility vehicles and sedans on a bitingly cold winter day in tony Rehoboth Beach.
The three-hour search took place with Biden’s consent and did not require a search warrant.
“The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate,” said Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal lawyer.
The search was the third federal search of a site tied to Biden in less than two months.
The first came after Biden’s lawyers found a small number of classified documents in November in a Washington D.C. office he once used. The feds found additional documents at the Penn Center office.
They then mounted a 13-hour top-to-bottom check of his Wilmington, Del., home, again after Biden’s team found a small number of classified documents.
Agents found documents with classified markings and also seized some of his handwritten notes.
The Wednesday search of Biden’s expansive beach home was widely expected because it is another location that Biden has spent a significant amount of time during the four years between leaving the White House after his term as vice president and returning as president.
The discoveries have tarnished his efforts to bring rule-following back to the White House after the brazen disregard for norms of former President Donald Trump.
Biden says he is fully cooperating with a probe into the documents, which is being led by special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The newest search will mark another unwelcome headline for the White House. But it also underscores the dramatic difference between the way Biden and Trump have handled the issue.
The FBI’s aggressive approach also undercuts far right-wing claims that Biden is being treated more favorably than Trump.
Unlike Biden, Trump admits intentionally taking hundreds of classified documents with him when he left the White House for his Florida estate.
After more than a year of unsuccessfully trying to get them back, federal authorities opened a probe into Trump’s mishandling of the documents.
The former president defied a subpoena for the return of the documents and falsely claimed through his lawyers that there were no more in his possession.
After obtaining evidence that that was a lie, including signs that Trump was trying to hide the documents, prosecutors got a judge to approve a search of Mar-a-Lago that turned up more than 300 classified documents.
Former Vice President Mike Pence also said he recently found a cache of classified documents in his Indiana home. Like Biden, he invited the FBI to do a more extensive search and says he had no idea the documents were there.