Bauer had made the search public on Wednesday. “Today, with the full support and cooperation of the President, the Justice Department is conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Delaware,” the attorney said. This is “another step in a careful and expeditious” investigation by the US Department of Justice, “which we will continue to fully support and facilitate.”
After the operation, Bauer explained that the search lasted around three and a half hours. It ran from 8.30 a.m. to noon (local time).
In recent months, classified documents have been found in a former Biden office in the capital, Washington, and in the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. The documents date from his time as Vice President under President Barack Obama (2009 to 2017) and from his earlier time as a US Senator. According to the White House, the documents were accidentally wrapped.
The US Department of Justice has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the case. The affair is extremely explosive for the 80-year-old US Democrat Biden, who wants to decide on a renewed presidential candidacy in the coming weeks or months – partly because of the parallels to his predecessor Donald Trump.
FBI agents had already searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in the state of Florida last August and confiscated numerous secret documents. In this case, a special investigator was deployed in November who, in addition to the secret documents, is also examining Trump’s role in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
However, there are big differences between the discovery of secret documents by Trump and Biden. Biden, for example, claims to have cooperated with the US judiciary from the start, unlike his Republican predecessor. In addition, more than 300 secret documents were found on Trump – significantly more than on Biden.
A US law requires presidents and vice presidents to turn over all their emails, letters and other documents to the National Archives after leaving office. Just last week it became known that secret files had also been discovered in the house of Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence. The finds have raised fundamental questions about how the US government handles classified information.
