During a search of US President Joe Biden’s weekend home on Wednesday, investigators found no classified documents. This was announced by one of Biden’s lawyers, Bob Bauer. The search in the community of Rehoboth in the state of Delaware took place in agreement with the lawyers. As with the search of Biden’s home in January, some materials and handwritten notes were taken that may be related to Biden’s time as vice president.
Biden has been criticized for weeks for his handling of secret files. The US President can no longer claim that he kept sensitive government documents in private rooms as a mistake or carelessness – because there are several cases of improper storage of files. The first batch of documents was found by the president’s staff on November 2 in an office that Biden had maintained following his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration. Most of the secret documents we are dealing with now date from that period, between 2009 and 2017.
The White House emphasizes that Biden’s lawyers immediately informed the National Archives after the find in November, which was ironically a few days before the US midterm elections. However, the public only found out about it in January when the broadcaster CBS reported about it. In response to the first discovery, Biden’s employees then looked elsewhere – and found what they were looking for, in a garage and in other offices.
For Biden, the document finds are extremely delicate. Because in the USA there is a crystal-clear regulation for the safekeeping of secret files after leaving office: Everything must be handed over to the National Archives. The US President has repeatedly emphasized that he is fully cooperating with the Department of Justice and other authorities.
Nevertheless, Biden’s strategy of distancing himself from his predecessor Donald Trump on the issue of secret documents is likely to have less and less success in the US public. Large amounts of confidential material were discovered and confiscated in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last summer during an FBI raid. Trump had refused to release the files to the National Archives for months.
Mike Pence, who was Vice President under Trump from 2017 to 2021, is now also the subject of the document affair. Documents that do not belong there have also been found in his home in the US state of Indiana, which became known last week.
Because there are three people affected, a fundamental debate is also underway in the USA about the secrecy of documents in the White House. Critics argue that far too many documents are classified even if they do not contain sensitive information affecting national security. Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland has hired a special prosecutor to investigate the incidents.