Two top law enforcement officials revealed Tuesday that the FBI raided the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement’s offices in mid-November after finding sensitive papers.
The officials said that President Joe Biden‘s lawyers cooperated with the search and that no search warrants were used. NBC News does not know the exact examination date or whether classified documents or anything else of importance was found. CBS News first reported the FBI search.
On November 2, Biden’s attorneys discovered several confidential documents at the Penn Biden Center in a president’s office. According to Biden’s attorneys, the National Archives and the Justice Department were informed right one of the discoveries.
The FBI’s search in November had not previously been made public by either the White House or Biden’s private attorneys. This month, the FBI also searched Biden’s house in Wilmington, Delaware, after his attorneys promised to grant them access.
According to his lawyer Bob Bauer, six items, including papers with secret markings, were discovered during that search in Biden’s Delaware residence.
According to Bauer, the records at the Wilmington residence appeared connected to Biden’s time as vice president and in the Senate. They were discovered after Biden’s attorney granted unrestricted access to the property.
Two House committees chaired by Republicans are looking into Biden’s handling of secret documents, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to head the federal government’s investigation.
The discovery of “a small number of documents” with classified markings at the Penn Biden Center in November, just a few days before the midterm elections, was made public by a White House attorney in early January. As they left their office space at the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s lawyers discovered them inside a locked closet.
Donald Trump, a former president, is currently being investigated for having secret documents on his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago search warrant. More than 100 documents with classification markings, including some that were rated top secret, were found last summer as FBI officers carried out a search order. In December, it was revealed that the FBI had received two additional secret documents discovered in a Florida storage facility close to Trump’s Palm Beach resort.
Former Vice President Mike Pence hired outside counsel to search for materials with secret markings at his Indiana residence last month after it was claimed that Biden had had sensitive documents. A “limited number” were discovered, according to Pence’s attorneys.
