Tag: FBI

Republicans allege unspecified Biden ‘scheme,’ fire off new FBI subpoena

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Comer and Grassley say they became aware of the potential existence of material underpinning the anti-Biden allegations from a “highly credible whistleblower” who contacted lawmakers to assert knowledge of a conversation the FBI had with a confidential source.
The two Republicans provided no information on the purported whistleblower’s background, or how that person would have knowledge of an alleged conversation with an FBI source. GOP lawmakers have faced Democratic criticism in the past for applying the whistleblower designation to individuals who don’t meet the legal definition.
“Based on the alleged specificity within the document, it would appear that the DOJ and the FBI have enough information to determine the truth and accuracy of the information contained within it. However, it remains unclear what steps, if any, were taken to investigate the matter,” Comer and Grassley wrote on Wednesday to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The subpoena compels the FBI to require over any FD-1023 forms — the formal term for records that describe conversations with a confidential human source — from June 2020 that contain the word “Biden.” The forms themselves, regardless of their content, do not independently amount to evidence of wrongdoing.
The FBI has until May 10 to hand over the documents, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by POLITICO.
Grassley and Comer acknowledged in their letter to Wray and Garland that they weren’t sure if the FBI had already investigated the matter internally. The DOJ confirmed they received the Republicans’ letter and declined to comment. The FBI separately acknowledged that it had received the subpoena but declined to comment further.
But the subpoena sparked fierce pushback from both the White House and Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.
Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, accused Republicans of “floating anonymous innuendo” and tied the subpoena to a longer arc of Hill GOP investigations into Biden and his family.

“For going on five years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically-motivated attacks against the President and his family without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests. That’s because they prefer floating anonymous innuendo, amplified by the megaphone of their allies in rightwing media, to get attention,” Sams said in a statement.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, called the subpoena a “baseless partisan stunt.”
“Committee Republicans are recycling unsubstantiated claims floated by Senate Republicans by issuing a subpoena to the FBI to require the release of a June 2020 tip from an unknown informant. During this same time period, Rudy Giuliani and Russian agents, sanctioned by Trump’s Treasury Department, were peddling disinformation aimed at interfering in the 2020 presidential election,” Raskin added.
No evidence has emerged that Biden’s decisions were influenced by his son’s arrangements, though Hunter Biden’s business dealings have propelled GOP investigations on both sides of the Capitol since before his father’s election.
Comer wrote in a letter to Wray accompanying the subpoena that his ongoing investigation would “inform potential legislative solutions that the Committee is exploring,” including the financial disclosures required by presidents, vice presidents and their family members.
The GOP volley is all but guaranteed to spark fierce pushback and skepticism. Comer and Grassley have both spearheaded long-running Biden investigations: Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) investigated Hunter Biden in the leadup to the 2020 election, drawing charges from Democrats and even warnings from some fellow Republicans that they were at risk of spreading Russian misinformation.
Since Republicans took the House majority at the start of the year, Comer has conducted a lengthy investigation — largely behind the scenes — that’s so far focused on Hunter Biden and other Biden family members. He’s expected to hold a press conference later this month to detail his findings after the Treasury Department granted him access to “suspicious activity reports,” which don’t indicate wrongdoing but are frequently used in law enforcement investigations.
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#Republicans #allege #unspecified #Biden #scheme #fire #FBI #subpoena
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

May 4, 2023
FBI makes arrest in investigation of suspected leaker of classified intelligence

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Teixeira was arrested “in connection with the unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information,” the attorney general said, using language that tracks violations of the Espionage Act.
No specific charges were immediately announced, but Teixeira is expected to appear in federal court in Boston on Friday.
During a hastily-assembled appearance before reporters at Justice Department headquarters, Garland spoke for less than a minute and provided no other details about the investigation beyond saying that it was “ongoing.”
An FBI statement also confirmed Teixeira’s arrest and said it related to “his alleged involvement in leaking classified U.S. government and military documents.”
“Since late last week the FBI has aggressively pursued investigative leads and today’s arrest exemplifies our continued commitment to identifying, pursuing, and holding accountable those who betray our country’s trust and put our national security at risk,” the FBI statement added.
The 21-year-old appears to have been part of a small group on the Discord social media platform. He first wrote about the sensitive information in written paragraphs, paraphrased from the documents, months ago, as POLITICO previously reported. Starting in January, he began posting photographs of printouts of the documents, which had been folded and then smoothed out.
The New York Times was the first to report that the likely leaker was Teixeira and said he was a member of the intelligence unit of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
The Washington Post first reported Thursday that the individual who leaked the documents on Discord worked on a military base. Teixeira was reportedly considered the leader of the small Discord channel, the Post reported, and espoused a love for guns and God.

The documents Teixeira allegedly leaked contained highly classified information, including from papers marked “Top Secret,” about the war in Ukraine and other global topics such as China, Iran and the Russian paramilitary group, Wagner.
President Joe Biden, speaking to journalists earlier in the day during a trip to Ireland, seemed to downplay the gravity of the breach which has roiled the intelligence community, the Pentagon and U.S. relationships with a variety of allies.
“I’m concerned that it happened. But there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that’s of great consequence,” Biden said while outside the residence of his Irish counterpart.
But the public leak of classified intelligence is the largest since Wikileaks, which from 2006 to 2021 led to the publication of millions of emails, documents and other sensitive materials online.
While the recent breach is much smaller in scale, the documents exposed in extraordinary detail the extent to which the U.S. spies on its allies and adversaries and included analyses that had been compiled just weeks before they were posted. The papers exposed battlefield planning by both the Ukrainians and the Russians, including detailed maps of troop movements, and that the U.S. had asked South Korea to provide Kyiv with ammunition.
The Biden administration first began looking into the leak last week, including how the documents first ended up online and how they were able to circulate for months without detection. The Justice Department is leading the interagency investigation.
DoD is reviewing its policies related to safeguarding classified material, including assessing how and where intelligence is shared, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Thursday.
“It’s important to understand that we do have stringent guidelines in place … this was a deliberate, criminal act, a violation of those guidelines,” Ryder said. “Anyone who violates those rules is doing so willfully.”
Lara Seligman contributed reporting.
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#FBI #arrest #investigation #suspected #leaker #classified #intelligence
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 14, 2023
Fear, burnout and insubordination: Insiders spill details about life at the highest levels of FBI

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The Man at the Center of it All
The FBI is no stranger to criticisms, both internal and external. For years, they’ve been piling up. A series of withering federal watchdog reports have faulted the bureau for slipshod compliance with everything from national-security surveillance procedures to its own rules limiting contacts with the media. A bipartisan assemblage of members of Congress excoriated the FBI for badly botching complaints of sexual abuse of teenage gymnasts. Trials spearheaded by a special counsel have exposed rivalries within the bureau and loose ends that investigators failed to run down.
Many of those issues have been compounded and thrust into public consciousness by Trump, who spent his entire presidency accusing the bureau of deep-seated political bias for pursuing cases against him or his allies — claims underscored by his abrupt and dramatic firing of Comey in 2017. To this day, Republicans in Congress are pushing charges that the bureau was “weaponized” by Trump’s opponents.
But unlike the blunt attacks by outsiders, which often go unrebutted by the bureau, the trial provided a forum for FBI insiders themselves to describe their own views of what has plagued the sprawling crime-fighting and intelligence agency. And their answers exposed fissures among factions of the FBI that have long been viewed in the Trump era as monolithic — divisions that FBI insiders said were more palpable during the handoff of the bureau from Robert Mueller to Comey.
And witnesses named names, with a particular focus on Baker’s predecessor as FBI general counsel, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
“This was a significant problem under Andrew Weissman’s tenure,” Baker testified, describing a lack of communication in the FBI counsel’s office. People “didn’t tell each other what they were doing,” he added, characterizing it as a “silo problem” that “I inherited from Andrew.”
Weissman is now best known as a top hand to Mueller during the investigation of the Trump campaign’s links to Russia in 2016 — and whether Trump obstructed justice. He led the attention-grabbing criminal cases against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. He has since become a prominent cable news contributor and commentator on Trump’s bevy of current legal woes. But to Baker, Weissmann was the root of a culture of fear and burnout that plagued the FBI general counsel’s office the day Baker arrived.
“I wanted people to tell me when I was wrong, which was the complete opposite from what Andrew did–Andrew Weissman,” Baker testified. “The agency … had this tendency not to speak truth to each other in meetings and in other settings.”
At another point, Baker referred to “the negativity that flowed from” Weissmann and said it left some employees in the counsel’s office distrustful of others.

Baker said the communications breakdown extended to the highest levels of the office, with top lawyers not speaking up even if they disagreed with a decision or saw problems it would create.
In a 2014 e-mail shown at the trial, Baker’s chief of staff Justin Schoolmaster, described the flawed hiring process for one general counsel’s office job as a mess left over from Weissmann’s tenure. “Hopefully this is one of the last remaining pot holes left by the previous regime,” Schoolmaster wrote.
Weissman declined to comment for this story.
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#Fear #burnout #insubordination #Insiders #spill #details #life #highest #levels #FBI
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 20, 2023
Proud Boys prosecutors push back on claims of misconduct after discovery of internal FBI messages

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However, the defense lawyers said the filtered messages included significant and suspicious exchanges that appeared to relate to the seditious conspiracy case against their clients.
In one exchange, Miller and another agent discussed learning of defendant Zachary Rehl’s plan to take the case to trial, in part because they had reviewed messages between him and his attorney at the time, Jonathon Moseley. The defense lawyers said it appeared, on its face, to be a breach of attorney-client privilege.
The lawyers also cited several other exchanges they viewed as fishy: a message from one agent asking that his name be edited out of a report concerning a meeting with a confidential human source; an FBI agent’s opinion about the strength of the Proud Boys conspiracy case; and a message from an agent discussing an order to destroy 338 pieces of evidence in an unidentified case.
Defense attorneys said they should be permitted to grill Miller about each of these topics when the trial resumes this week. The hidden messages sparked an uproar on Thursday, when Nicholas Smith, attorney for defendant Ethan Nordean, began questioning Miller about them. Prosecutors objected and later indicated they believed there had been a “spill” of classified information in the messages — a claim the defense lawyers worried was a pretense to shut down their review. U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly called the trial off for the day Friday to give the Justice Department and the defense a chance to clarify the issues.
In an 18-page filing Sunday, prosecutors went through each topic cited by the defense lawyers and suggested their claims lacked merit — and were not part of any attempt to withhold relevant evidence in the case.
The request for an edit to the report concerning the confidential human source, for example, was a “clerical” matter in which an agent who had been promoted to a supervisory role requested to be removed from the report because he was no longer handling the source — a request that was ultimately rescinded, prosecutors said. The comment from an agent about destroying evidence pertained to an unrelated “20-year-old multi codefendant trial” that had concluded long ago, the Justice Department attorneys said.
“As the Court knows, disposal of evidence is a routine part of the lifecycle of every criminal case,” the prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors also dismissed the notion that Miller and other agents had accessed privileged attorney-client information.

“She did no such thing,” they argued, “both because any privilege was waived and, in any event, even assuming … that the email to which the other agent was referring contained privileged information, no privileged information was passed Special Agent Miller.”
The exchange between Rehl and his attorney that the agents discussed was sent between Rehl and Moseley, his former attorney, who has since been disbarred, through a jailhouse email system. That system explicitly notifies users that it is monitored and that emails between an attorney and client will “not be treated as privileged.” Prisoners are supposed to use special legal mail procedures, legal phone calls or in-person meetings to communicate confidentially with their lawyers.
“Rehl waived any privilege by knowingly using FDC-Philadelphia’s monitored email system to communicate with his attorney,” prosecutors contended.
Prosecutors also rejected efforts by defense lawyers to introduce a message from an FBI agent suggesting he harbored doubts about the strength of the conspiracy evidence in the Proud Boys case. Typically, such agent opinions are excluded, and in any case, they say Miller contradicted the doubting agent’s comment, saying: “No we can. We DEF can now.”
Kelly will decide on Monday whether to permit the attorneys for Nordean, Rehl and their three co-defendants — Enrique Tarrio, Dominic Pezzola and Joseph Biggs — to ask Miller about these topics. Prosecutors contended on Sunday that their unsuccessfully implemented decision to withhold the messages — even ones that related to the Proud Boys case — was proper. Precedents and laws, they said, required the government to turn over only materials connected to what Miller testified about on the stand, not every statement she made about the Proud Boys case in general.
Miller testified last week, after the furor erupted, that FBI headquarters compiled her messages for her, culling them from a secret-level classified system. She filtered out any messages sent from other agents and then manually removed messages she viewed as not subject to disclosure, including many about other cases. But when prosecutors packaged up the remaining messages, they appear to not have realized the filtered messages from other agents were left in the spreadsheet as “hidden.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine, the supervising prosecutor on the case, told the court on Friday that the Justice Department was concerned that the hidden messages contained potential classified information, since they were drawn from the secret-level system and not fully vetted. Ballantine, in particular, was concerned that the message pertaining to destroying evidence was sent by an agent involved in “covert” activity and could reference classified information.
It’s unclear whether defense lawyers will be satisfied by the government’s responses. They’ve previously raised alarms that prosecutors would use the pretense of “classified” information to claw back damaging evidence. Prosecutors indicated on Sunday that they had removed just 80 rows of “classified or sensitive” messages from a production of nearly 12,000 rows. In addition, they suggested they had provided additional messages to help contextualize the ones cited by the defense.
Smith, one of the defense lawyers, indicated in a Sunday filing that the government had also deleted about 6,000 rows of messages it said were blank, leaving just over 5,000 for the defense to review. And he said he had inquired with prosecutors to clarify how many of the 80 substantive rows of removed messages were classified and how many were dubbed “sensitive” but not classified.
Smith said he should be allowed to cross-examine Miller on her handling of the messages in part because of her answers to a brief set of questions about them on Thursday, when she indicated that she hadn’t removed or filtered out relevant materials.
“Whether the agent gave truthful testimony about her legal obligations related to her work on this case is patently a matter of credibility,” Smith wrote.
Though cross-examination typically relates only to the substance of a witness’s direct testimony, Smith pointed out that he was also permitted to raise questions about a witness’ credibility, which he said made the handling of those messages fair game for questioning.
Prosecutors said that if the defense lawyers were allowed to question her at all about the unsuccessfully withheld messages — a step the government largely opposes — it should come during the defense’s case, set to begin within the next two weeks, not on cross-examination during the government’s case.
“The topics in question are miles outside the scope of Agent Miller’s direct testimony,” the prosecutors argued.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 13, 2023
FBI searched University of Delaware in Biden documents investigation

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The FBI searched the University of Delaware in recent weeks for classified documents as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of sensitive government records by Joe Biden.
The search, first reported by CNN, was confirmed to the Associated Press by a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The person would not say whether anything was found.
A justice department special counsel is investigating how classified documents from Biden’s time as vice-president and senator came to end up in his home and former office – and whether any mishandling involved criminal intent or was unintentional. Biden’s personal lawyers disclosed in January that a small batch of documents with classified markings had been found weeks earlier in his former Washington office, and they have since allowed FBI searches of multiple properties.
The university is Biden’s alma mater. In 2011, Biden donated his records from his 36 years serving in the US Senate to the school. The documents arrived on 6 June 2012, according to the university, which released photos of the numbered boxes being unloaded at the university alongside blue and gold balloons.
Under the terms of Biden’s gift, the records are to remain sealed until two years after he retires from public life.
Biden’s Senate records would not be covered by the Presidential Records Act, though prohibitions on mishandling classified information would still apply.
The White House referred questions to the justice department, which declined to comment. The University of Delaware also referred questions to the justice department.
The university is the fourth known entity to be searched by the FBI following inspections of Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington DC, where records with classified markings were initially found in a locked closet by Biden’s personal lawyers in November, and more recently of his Delaware homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach.

Those searches were all done voluntarily and with the consent of Biden’s legal team.
The FBI took six items that contained documents with classified markings during its January search of the Wilmington home, Biden’s personal lawyer said. Agents did not find classified documents at the Rehoboth Beach property but did take some handwritten notes and other materials relating to Biden’s time as vice-president for review.
The justice department is separately investigating the retention by former president Donald Trump of roughly 300 documents marked as classified at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. The FBI served a search warrant at the home last August after months of resistance by Trump and his representatives to returning the documents to the government.
The FBI also searched the Indiana home of former vice-president Mike Pence last week after his lawyers came forward to say they had found a small number of documents with classified markings. A Pence adviser said one additional document with classified markings was found during that search.
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#FBI #searched #University #Delaware #Biden #documents #investigation
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023
FBI searched University of Delaware in Biden documents probe

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President Joe Biden speaks to the University of Delaware Class of 2022 during its commencement ceremony in Newark, Del., May 28, 2022. The FBI searched the University of Delaware in recent weeks for classified documents as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of sensitive government records by Biden. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
By Associated Press
02/15/2023 09:29 PM EST
WASHINGTON — The FBI searched the University of Delaware in recent weeks for classified documents as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of sensitive government records by President Joe Biden.
The search, first reported by CNN, was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The person would not say whether anything was found.
The university is Biden’s alma mater. In 2011, Biden donated his records from his 36 years serving in the U.S. Senate to the school. The documents arrived June 6, 2012, according to the university, which released photos of the numbered boxes being unloaded at the university alongside blue and gold balloons.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 16, 2023
Texas AG settles with former aides who reported him to FBI

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Both sides signed a mediated agreement that was filed in the Texas Supreme Court and will be followed by a longer, formalized settlement.
“Attorney General Ken Paxton accepts that plaintiffs acted in a manner that they thought was right and apologizes for referring to them as ‘rogue employees,’” the final settlement must state, according to court records.
In all, eight members of Paxton’s senior staff joined in the extraordinary revolt in 2020, and they either resigned or were fired. The attorney general said he settled with the four who sued under Texas’ whistleblower law to put to rest “this unfortunate sideshow.”
“I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as attorney general is unburdened by unnecessary distractions,” Paxton said in a statement.
The $3.3 million payout would not come from Paxton’s own pocket but from state funds, which means it would still require approval by the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature.
Settlement of the case, which Paxton’s office fought in court for years, means he will avoid sitting for a civil deposition at a time when a corruption investigation by federal agents and prosecutors remains open. In turn, the attorney general’s office agreed to remove an October 2020 news release from its website that decries Paxton’s accusers and to issue the statement of contrition to former staffers David Maxwell, Ryan Vassar, Mark Penley and James Blake Brickman.
“The whistleblowers sacrificed their jobs and have spent more than two years fighting for what is right,” said Maxwell’s lawyer, TJ Turner. Brickman was not part of the mediation with Paxton’s office but joined the settlement, attorney Tom Nesbitt said, after being asked to and negotiating “significant non-monetary terms.”
The settlement also prevents Paxton from seeking the withdrawal of a 2021 appeals court ruling that state whistleblower law applies to the attorney general.

The agreement does not include any provisions limiting the ability of Paxton’s accusers to make public statements or cooperate with federal investigators.
The deal comes more than two years after Paxton’s staff accused him of misusing his office to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, whose business was also under federal investigation. The allegations centered on Paxton hiring an outside lawyer to investigate Paul’s claims of misconduct by the FBI.
Paxton and Paul have broadly denied wrongdoing and neither has been charged with a federal crime.
In the wake of the revolt, an Associated Press investigation in September found that Paxton’s agency has come unmoored, with seasoned lawyers quitting over practices they say slant legal work, reward loyalists and drum out dissent.
But the investigation, accusations and a separate 2015 securities fraud indictment for which Paxton has yet to face trial have done little to hurt him politically. He easily defeated challenger George P. Bush in a contested GOP primary last spring, went on to decisively beat his Democratic opponent and secure a third term in November and has filed a steady stream of legal challenges to the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
While swearing in Paxton to another four years on the job last month, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott described it as an easy call during the midterm elections to keep backing him.
“I supported Ken Paxton because I thought the way he was running the attorney general’s office was the right way to run the attorney general’s office,” said Abbott.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 11, 2023
FBI searches Pence’s home for classified materials

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The search, which was voluntarily arranged by Pence with the Justice Department, had been expected for weeks. A Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed late Friday morning that the FBI was conducting a consent-based search. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to queries from POLITICO on Friday about which DOJ prosecutors are overseeing the inquiry.
According to a person familiar with the events, who provided information on the condition of anonymity to reveal details of the procedure, a member of Pence’s legal team was present for the entirety of the search. The scope of the search included not only classified records but also documents that might be original copies of presidential records that should be returned to the National Archives, the person said.
Matters related to mishandling or disclosure of classified information are typically handled by Justice’s National Security Division, but Attorney General Merrick Garland farmed out inquiries into recent episodes involving President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to special prosecutors.
Pence has been in California this week for the birth of his granddaughter.
In January, Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, found a dozen classified documents in the home, a revelation he reported in a letter to the National Archives.
Asked by ABC News whether he had taken any classified documents to his home, he responded: “I did not.”
Pence has also received a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to subvert the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Pence was the target of Trump’s last-ditch bid to derail the transfer of power to Joe Biden, leaning on his then-vice president to prevent Congress from counting electoral votes that would affirm Biden’s victory.

The subpoena has the potential to trigger an executive privilege fight if Trump or Pence ask a judge to rule that some or all of their testimony should be off limits to prosecutors and the grand jury in order to protect White House deliberations.
Two of Pence’s top aides — Marc Short and Greg Jacob — have already testified to the grand jury and are the subject of ongoing secret legal proceedings pending before the federal courts related to Trump’s effort to assert privilege over their testimony.
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 10, 2023
FBI searches Biden’s beach home in Delaware

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“The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate,” he said. “We will have further information at the conclusion of today’s search.”
The search is part of a special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of the classified materials found in November at his office in Washington and in December and January at his home in Wilmington. In late January, a 13-hour search of Biden’s home recovered additional classified items.
The drip of new information has widened the scope of the probe into Biden and raised fresh frustration among some Democrats over why the searches weren’t conducted sooner and more thoroughly. Late last month, however, former Vice President Mike Pence revealed a search of his home in Indiana also had resulted in the finding of some classified information.
There is also a separate special counsel investigation into former President Donald’s storage of a far larger cache of classified documents at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
The Bidens bought the beach house after his time as vice president, and his family visits the property occasionally on weekends. Biden’s lawyers said previously that they had searched the Rehoboth home and turned up no classified materials.
The latest search comes as the special counsel in the investigation, Robert Hur, formally begins his work on the case.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 1, 2023
FBI searches Joe Biden’s Wilmington home, finds more classified materials

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Washington: FBI investigators have found additional classified documents from US President Joe Biden’s residence in Wilmington after conducting a 13-hour search of the home, intensifying the probe into discoveries that could become a political and possible legal liability for him as he prepares to launch a reelection bid in 2024.
Bob Bauer, the President’s personal attorney, said in a statement that during the search on Friday, “Department of Justice took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as vice president.
“DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years,” he said.
The total number of classified documents found in the residences and private offices of Biden has now increased to nearly a dozen and a half. All documents, including from his term as vice president from 2009 to 2016, have now been taken into possession of federal agents.
“DOJ requested that the search not be made public in advance, in accordance with its standard procedures, and we agreed to cooperate,” Bauer said.
Biden is spending time at his Wilmington, Delaware residence this weekend.
“DOJ had full access to the President’s home, including personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules, and reminders going back decades,” Bauer said.
Last week, US Attorney General Merrick B Garland appointed a special counsel Robert Hur to investigate the discovery of the classified documents at the private offices and residence of the President.

Richard Sauber, Special Counsel to the President, said that Biden directed his personal lawyers to be fully cooperative with the Justice Department as part of its ongoing investigation. That has been the case since a small number of materials were initially discovered at the Penn Biden Center, he said.
The President and his team are working swiftly to ensure the DOJ and the Special Counsel have what they need to conduct a thorough review, he said.
“Neither the President nor the First Lady were present during the search. The President’s lawyers and White House Counsel’s Office will continue to cooperate with the DOJ and the Special Counsel to help ensure this process is conducted swiftly and efficiently,” Sauber said.
The federal search of Biden’s home, while voluntary, marks an escalation of the probe into the President’s handling of classified documents and will inevitably draw comparisons to his predecessor, former president Donald Trump- even if the FBI’s search of Trump’s residence was conducted under different circumstances, CNN said.
Trump also faces a probe over his alleged mishandling of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida Mar-a-Lago residence and his alleged failure to comply with a subpoena.
The lengthy search and subsequent discovery of more documents is a political headache and a possible legal liability for Biden, as he prepares to declare whether he will run for a second term.
Biden, 80, already America’s oldest sitting president, in November said he intends to run again for the presidency in 2024.
Biden said he was “surprised” to learn of the discovery of the records. He had branded his predecessor Trump, “irresponsible” for storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
President Biden told reporters in California on Thursday that he “has no regrets” on the handling of documents marked classified.
When asked why the White House didn’t disclose the existence of the documents in November before the midterm elections, he told reporters he thinks they’re going to find out “there’s no there there.” A first batch of classified documents had been found on November 2 at the Penn Biden Center, a think-tank Biden founded in Washington DC.
A second batch of records was found on December 20 in the garage at his Wilmington home, while another document was found in a storage space at the house on January 12.
After finding the documents, Biden said his team immediately turned them over to the National Archives and the Justice Department.
Under the Presidential Records Act, White House records are supposed to go to the National Archives once an administration ends, where they can be stored securely.
The Republican Party was quick to slam Biden after the new discovery.
“This says some of the docs are from his Senate service. Serious Q: how on earth did he do that? I’ve served in the Senate for 10 years. Every single classified doc I’ve read—100%—has been in a secure SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) in the basement of the Capitol. What the hell??” Senator Ted Cruz said.
“Even more highly classified documents were found in Biden’s home!! How are they just now discovering these? This is getting out of hand. As Vice President, Biden had NO RIGHT to possess these. This scandal is getting bigger every single day!!” Congressman Ronny Jackson said.
“After all the misleading, downplaying statements made by the WH (White House), it’s time for the FBI to seal the crime scene, bar anyone from the WH, including POTUS (President of the United States) and his lawyers, from entering and conducting the search themselves. No more special treatment,” former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said.
Emboldened by a new majority and armed with subpoena power, House Republicans were already gearing up for a series of investigations into the Biden family’s finances and Biden’s son Hunter.
The discovery of the classified documents opens up a new line of inquiry.
“I think Congress has to investigate this,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 22, 2023