LAST UPDATE | 1 Feb 2023

A SEARCH BY US law enforcement of President Joe Biden’s Delaware beach house turned up no classified documents, the president’s lawyer has said.

“No documents with classified markings were found,” lawyer Bob Bauer said in a statement after the latest search of the president’s belongings for improperly stored documents.

Agents did, however, take “for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as vice president”.

The search in Rehoboth, which lawyer Bob Bauer said was done “with the president’s full support and cooperation”, followed similar searches that turned up small numbers of documents in Biden’s home in Wilmington and a former office space in Washington, DC.

The drip of revelations has been a drag on Biden as he celebrates the mid-point in his first term and reportedly prepares to announce he’s running for a second.

A special counsel has been appointed by the Justice Department to run an independent investigation, similar to another special counsel overseeing the probe of former president Donald Trump’s huge stash of classified documents discovered at his home in Florida.

According to the White House, Biden’s problem is down to accidental mistakes in storing documents from a decade ago when he was vice president under Barack Obama.

Unlike Trump, who resisted handing over hundreds of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021, Biden says he has cooperated with the authorities ever since the discovery of a handful of classified documents in a former office he used at a think tank in Washington.

A subsequent search by the FBI of his main private home in Wilmington turned up more documents. The Rehoboth property, which he uses much less often, is now the third location to be inspected by the authorities.

In his statement, Bauer said the Justice Department launched the Rehoboth search without “advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate”.

“The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate. We will have further information at the conclusion of today’s search.”

- © AFP 2023