WASHINGTON — Five additional pages of classified documents were discovered among material at President Joe Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, White House special counsel Richard Sauber said.
Sauber said he went to Wilmington on Thursday to facilitate providing a document that Biden’s personal attorney found the day before to the Justice Department. While transferring it to accompanying DOJ officials, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material, for a total of six pages, Sauber said in a statement.
The latest discovery adds to revelations this week that classified documents dating from Biden’s vice presidency were found at his home and private office, which the White House kept secret from the public for months. He’s now facing a new political risk ahead of the 2024 election, including a special counsel investigation led by a former Donald Trump appointee.
Attorneys discovered classified documents in November at a think-tank office in Washington that Biden used after serving as vice president. That prompted a search of other areas where Biden may have kept records from his time in office — including his two Delaware homes — and yielded additional classified documents from the garage and an adjoining room at his house in Wilmington.
The White House has said the documents were promptly returned to the federal government, and that the search is now complete. But aides have offered few answers about how the documents were improperly removed, why the White House waited to disclose their existence, and who might have had access to the materials.
The president’s lawyers “have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity,” Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney, said in a separate statement Saturday.
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(With assistance from Akayla Gardner.)
