“Today, with the full support and cooperation of the presidentthe Justice Department is conducting a planned search of his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware,” announced Bob Bauer, personal attorney for US President Joe Biden.
“In accordance with standard Justice Department procedures, in the interest of the security and integrity of the operation, this search was conducted without public notice and we agreed to cooperate,” Bauer continued, calling today’s action “a further step of an accurate and timely process by the department that we will continue to fully support and facilitate“. Bauer then added that “further information will be provided after the search has taken place”.
The investigation resulted from an initial discovery of documents on 2 November
Today’s research in Rehoboth is part of the investigation that arose after the current US president’s own lawyers discovered, and reported to the Justice Department, confidential documents last November 2 as they closed an office at Penn Biden Center, an Ivy League school-affiliated think tank.
Other confidential documents were later discovered, again by his lawyers, in Biden’s home in Wilmington, government files that date back to when he was a senator and then a vice president to Barack Obama. The FBI subsequently, with the collaboration of the president, searched both his old office at the Penn Biden Center and his home in Wilmington.
The new search takes place on the same day that the Justice Department announced that Robert Hur, the special prosecutor in charge of the investigationformally took charge of documents withheld from Biden, inheriting the already substantial work done by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors.
The discovery of the first documents wrongfully withheld by Biden only came to public light last month, arousing much controversy also because the current US president had harshly criticized mismanagement by former President Donald J. Trump classified government files found at his Florida residence.
Confidential documents were also found in the home of Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence. Biden promised to cooperate in the search and Pence said he took responsibility for the documents found. Instead, Trump has resisted efforts to return the materials in his possessionprompting an FBI search of his Florida resort home last year.
