FBI Searched Biden’s Former Think-Tank Office in November
Search for classified documents was undertaken after agreement with White House
WASHINGTON—The Federal Bureau of Investigation searched President Biden’s former office at a Washington think tank for classified documents in November, people familiar with the matter said, shortly after his aides earlier that month found such material and surrendered it to the National Archives.
The search came after Mr. Biden’s lawyers agreed to let agents search his former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, where aides on Nov. 2 discovered roughly a dozen documents marked classified. It couldn’t be determined whether investigators found any additional items in the search, which was reported earlier by CBS News.
Revelations that classified material was found in the office as well as his home in Wilmington, Del., have raised concerns about Mr. Biden’s handling of the nation’s secrets and put the White House on the defensive over the manner in which it disclosed to the public the scope of the mishandled documents.
Neither the White House nor the Justice Department mentioned the November office search even as officials offered timelines of the discoveries and Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to examine why and how the documents followed Mr. Biden. Mr. Garland said the FBI on Nov. 9 began assessing whether classified material had been mishandled in violation of federal law.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. A spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ron Ozio, a spokesman for the University of Pennsylvania, referred questions about the search to the Justice Department.
After the initial discovery at the Washington think tank, the Justice Department considered having FBI agents monitor the Biden legal team’s search for additional classified documents at the president’s homes, but decided against it, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
After Mr. Biden’s team found additional documents in his garage, and turned them over to law enforcement, FBI agents searched the Wilmington home on Jan. 20, taking six additional items with classified markings and some related materials. Mr. Biden’s lawyers said they gave the FBI full access to the property ahead of the search, which lasted 12 hours.
The special counsel, Robert Hur, resigned from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP on Tuesday and is expected to be sworn in on Wednesday, people familiar with the appointment said.
Meanwhile, the general counsel of the National Archives and Records Administration sat Tuesday afternoon for a transcribed interview with the GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee. That panel, which has jurisdiction over NARA, has been conducting a broad probe into the document discoveries, requesting information from the Archives, the White House, the Secret Service and the Penn Biden Center.
Lawmakers from both parties have been frustrated that the intelligence community hasn’t turned over or provided a detailed briefing on the classified documents found among Mr. Biden’s personal possessions, or another set of documents found in former President Donald Trump’s possession. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) on Tuesday backed a request from Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D., Va.) and the panel’s top Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), for details about the classified documents found among Mr. Biden’s personal possessions.
“What they’re asking for here would not interfere with these ongoing criminal investigations. And I hope the administration will come up with a better answer than no, which is apparently what both the chairman and the vice chairman were told recently,” Mr. McConnell said. “Their request to find out exactly what kind of documents were in improper custody seems to me squarely within their oversight mission on the Intel Committee.”
The Biden document saga has drawn comparisons to the efforts by the National Archives and the Justice Department to retrieve classified and other documents from Mr. Trump’s Florida residence, which escalated over more than a year to include a criminal investigation into possible obstruction, and a warrant-backed search of the resort in August. Mr. Trump has called the probe a witch hunt and denied wrongdoing.
Last week, lawyers for former Vice President Mike Pence revealed that he, too, had discovered classified material at his home in Indiana, adding that he took the documents by mistake and was unaware he had them.