Updated Jan 12, 2023 - Politics & Policy

White House confirms set of classified documents found in Biden's Wilmington garage

Erin Doherty

US President Joe Biden returns to the White House from Walter Reed hospital on the South Lawn in Washington, DC on January 11, 2023. — President Biden returns to the White House from Walter Reed hospital on the South Lawn on Jan. 11, 2023. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

The White House said Thursday that a second set of classified documents from when President Biden was vice president had been discovered at his Wilmington, Del. home.

The big picture: The announcement comes days after the White House confirmed that a batch of classified documents from his time as VP had been discovered in a private office space.

After the initial discovery of the government documents, the president's lawyers conducted a search at Biden's homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, White House lawyer Richard Sauber said.
"During the review, the lawyers discovered among personal and political papers a small number of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings," Sauber said in a statement Thursday.
"All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the President’s Wilmington residence garage."
Sauber said that one one-page document "was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room." No documents were found in Rehoboth Beach.
The White House statement did not provide details on the contents of the newly discovered records, or when they were located.

State of play: Lawyers for the president said they have now completed the review for additional documents and will "continue to cooperate with the review by the Department of Justice."

"As was done in the case of the Penn-Biden Center, the Department of Justice was immediately notified, and the lawyers arranged for the Department of Justice to take possession of these documents," Sauber said.

Catch up quick: The White House confirmed Monday that classified documents were found while Biden's personal attorneys were packing files stored in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center, which Biden occasionally used from mid-2017 until the start of his 2020 campaign.

Biden said that he was "surprised" that the government records were taken to his old office and added that he doesn't know "what's in the documents."

Zoom out: Some Republican lawmakers have tried to connect the Biden documents to the investigation into classified Trump documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, but at least at this point, the two have distinctions.

Go deeper... 3 ways Biden and Trump's classified doc discovery differed at outset

Editor's note: This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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White House confirms set of classified documents found in Biden's Wilmington garage

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