An office constructing housing the Penn Biden Center, a think tank affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, is seen in Washington, DC, January 10, 2023, following reports that classified documents from the time when US President Joe Biden was serving as Barack Obama’s vp have been found at the middle that Biden sometimes used as office space.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
FBI agents searched the office President Joe Biden used after his vice presidency in Washington, D.C., in mid-November after his lawyers first discovered classified documents there earlier that month, two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.
The White House and Biden’s personal attorneys had not previously disclosed the search of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, at the same time as they faced weeks of questions on the invention of classified records. CBS broke the news of the FBI search on Tuesday.
The officials told NBC that Biden’s lawyers cooperated fully with the search, and the Justice Department didn’t issue a search warrant. Biden’s team also worked with the Justice Department in a later FBI search of his Wilmington, Delaware, home, for which it also didn’t issue a warrant.
The president’s personal attorneys discovered documents on the think tank office on Nov. 2. The attorneys notified the National Archives, resulting in an investigation by the Justice Department. However the White House didn’t disclose the event until it was reported on Jan. 9.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Jan. 12 that he appointed Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney, as special counsel to research.
Biden’s attorneys later found more documents on the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Dec. 20, prompting a search of the house by FBI agents on Jan. 20. Biden’s personal lawyers said Justice Department investigators found greater than half a dozen additional documents, some marked classified, within the search. The documents discovered range from his Senate tenure to his time as vp under former President Barack Obama.
Former President Donald Trump can be facing a special counsel investigation for failing to show over classified documents. His Florida Mar-a-Lago home was searched by FBI agents in early August. Unlike Biden, who agreed to let agents in to go looking, the Justice Department served Trump a search warrant after a forwards and backwards.
Last week, it was also reported that Trump’s vp, Mike Pence, also had classified documents in his home in Indiana.
