U.S. Secret Service agents are seen in front of Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., home on Jan. 12, 2021. The FBI is conducting a planned search of President Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home as a part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents. That is in line with a press release from Biden’s personal lawyer.
Shannon McNaught | Delaware News Journal | AP
FBI agents on Wednesday morning searched the Rehoboth, Delaware, beach home of President Joe Biden for greater than three hours, but found no documents marked classified, his personal lawyer said.
Agents “took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President,” Biden’s lawyer Bob Bauer said.
A senior law enforcement source who spoke with NBC News corroborated Bauer’s characterization of the end result of the FBI’s search.
The planned, consensual search is the primary publicly known time the FBI searched the Rehoboth residence. Agents didn’t obtain a warrant for the search, which began at 8:30 a.m. ET and ended at noon. That they had not gotten warrants for 2 prior FBI searches of other locations linked to Biden.
The Department of Justice is investigating the invention of classified documents at a non-public office in a Washington, D.C., think tank that Biden had used while a non-public citizen, and at his residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, previously said that the president’s lawyers searched the Rehoboth home and the Wilmington residence on Jan. 11.
Those attorneys found classified records in Wilmington, but not in Rehoboth, in line with Bauer.
The FBI searched the think tank office in mid-November after Biden’s personal lawyers first found classified records there on Nov. 2. The FBI searched Biden’s Wilmington home on Jan. 20.
White House spokesman Ian Sams on Wednesday wouldn’t say what number of classified documents in total have been found on the Biden-linked locations.
In an earlier statement Wednesday, Bauer said, “Today, with the President’s full support and cooperation, the DOJ is conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Delaware.”
US President Joe Biden rides a motorbike through Gordon’s Pond State Park in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on July 10, 2022.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images
“Under DOJ’s standard procedures, within the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do that work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate,” the lawyer said.
“The search today is an additional step in a radical and timely DOJ process we’ll proceed to totally support and facilitate,” Bauer said.
Bauer in a later statement confirmed the search had ended.
“No documents with classified markings were found,” Bauer said.
Ian Sams told reporters later, “I’m not going to talk to the negotiations or discussions or collaborations between the president’s personal attorney and the DOJ in establishing the search.”
“We’re cooperating fully with the Justice Department,” Sams said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel, Robert Hur, to oversee the investigation into the Biden documents.
Special Assistant To The President And Spokesperson For The White House Counsel’s Office Ian Sams calls on reporters outside the West Wing of the White House on February 01, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Garland last yr appointed one other special counsel to analyze the invention of classified records and other government documents on the residence of former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
FBI agents on Aug. 9 found those documents during a raid at Mar-a-Lago. In that search, agents had obtained a warrant.
Lawyers for Trump’s vp, Mike Pence, two weeks ago notified the National Archives and Records Administration that that they had found a “small number” of classified documents at his home in Carmel, Indiana, on Jan. 16.
— Additional reporting by CNBC’s Emma Kinery and Kevin Breuninger.
