A lawyer for President Joe Biden said that additional documents with classified markings were found at his Wilmington home, after previously saying that a single page was found in that room.
Richard Sauber, a White House lawyer, said in a statement on Saturday that because he has a security clearance, he went to the Wilmington home on Thursday evening to secure a single document that was found a day earlier. “While I was transferring it to the DOJ official who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages. The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.”
Biden’s team had previously acknowledged the discovery of documents with classified markings in the garage of the residence.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as special counsel on Thursday to investigate the handling of the documents and whether any laws were broken.
The initial batch of documents were found at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., where Biden maintained an office after serving as vice president. Garland said that the National Archives’ inspector general informed a DOJ prosecutor on Nov. 4 that it got word from the White House that the documents had been identified at the offices. Garland said that he appointed Chicago U.S. Attorney John Lausch to conduct an initial review of the matter.
Garland said that on December 20, Biden’s personal attorney informed Lausch that additional documents were found in the garage of Biden’s residence in Wilmington, DE.
Then, on Thursday, Biden’s personal counsel called Lausch this morning to inform him that an additional classified document was found at the Biden residence in a room adjacent to the garage.
In his statement, Sauber said that after the discovery of the single page on Wednesday, the attorneys conducting the search stopped searching that area because they did not have security clearances.
“The President’s lawyers have acted immediately and voluntarily to provide the Penn Biden documents to the Archives and the Wilmington documents to the DOJ,” Sauber said.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, already has launched his own investigation of the White House and Justice Department handling of the discovery of the classified material.
