FBI agents found no classified documents during a planned search of President Joe Biden’s beach residence in Delaware on Feb. 1, according to a lawyer who represents the president.
“No documents with classified markings were found," Bob Bauer, the lawyer, said in a statement to news outlets.
U.S. officials were at the Rehoboth Beach house from about 8:30 a.m. to noon local time, according to Bauer.
The FBI and its parent agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ), declined to comment.
“Consistent with the process in Wilmington, the DOJ took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President,” Bauer said.
Officials conducted the search “with the President’s full support and cooperation,” Bauer had said earlier.
The house in Rehoboth Beach hadn’t previously been searched, according to publicly available information.
Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, was searched in January, according to the DOJ and Biden’s representatives. While there, agents took possession of various materials, including six items that consisted of documents with classification markings.
Those materials weren’t identified during a review by Biden’s team.
In 2022, lawyers representing the president who were packing up his former office at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington discovered classified materials there, according to the White House. The discovery, which wasn’t publicly disclosed until this year, triggered reviews at the Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach residences.
Multiple materials marked classified were found at the house in Wilmington, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, has said.
Biden and First Lady Jill Biden bought the six-bedroom Rehoboth home in 2017, local media reported.
In Wilmington, agents spent about 13 hours searching and had access to every room, according to Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson. The Department of Justice has described that effort as a “planned, consensual search.”
“This was an unprecedented offer for DOJ to thoroughly search the personal family home of the President of the United States to ensure that any documents that should be in the possession of the government were in the possession of the government. And it reveals how seriously the President is taking this issue and how actively he is cooperating with the ongoing investigation,” Sams said in a press call.
Sams on Feb. 1 declined to say whether U.S. officials had searched any other locations in the probe into Biden beyond the two homes and the Penn Biden Center.
Some of the documents Biden was holding date back to his time as vice president, while others are from his time as a U.S. senator.
While presidents have the authority to declassify materials, vice presidents and senators don’t.
Materials with classified markings also have been discovered at the home of former Vice President Mike Pence in Indiana and at former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida—including during the execution of a search warrant in 2022.
Pence has said the materials were “inadvertently” transported to his residence, while Trump has said he declassified the materials found at his resort.
Biden often retreats to one of his Delaware homes on weekends. He was at the Rehoboth Beach house as recently as Jan. 23.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, has appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to probe whether any person violated laws in the handling of the materials. Garland previously appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate Trump.
