FBI Searching Biden’s Rehoboth Beach Home in Classified Documents Probe
FBI Searching Biden’s Rehoboth Beach Home in Classified Documents Probe

By Zachary Stieber

FBI agents were searching President Joe Biden’s beach home on Feb. 1, according to a lawyer who represents the president.

Agents, “with the President’s full support and cooperation,” were “conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Delaware,” Bob Bauer, the lawyer, said in a statement.

The FBI is part of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“Under DOJ’s standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate,” Bauer added. “The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate. We will have further information at the conclusion of today’s search.”

The FBI and DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Biden’s abode in Rehoboth Beach has not previously been searched, according to publicly available information.

Biden’s home in Wilmington, also in Delaware, was searched in January, according to the DOJ and Biden’s representatives. While there, agents took possession of various materials, including six items which consisted of documents with classification markings.

Those materials were not identified during a review by Biden’s team.

The saga started in 2022, when, according to the White House, lawyers representing the president who were packing up his former offices in Washington discovered classified materials there.

The revelation, not revealed to the public until after the New Year, triggered reviews at the Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach residences.

While multiple materials marked classified were found at the former, none were discovered at the latter, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, has said.

Biden and First Lady Jill Biden bought the six-bedroom home in 2017, local media reported.

U.S. Secret Service agents in front of Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., home in a Jan. 12, 2021, file image. (Shannon McNaught/Delaware News Journal via AP)

The FBI reportedly searched the Penn Biden Center, where the initial tranche was located, shortly after the discovery. The bureau did not dispute the reports.

In Wilmington, agents spent about 13 hours searching and had access to every room, according to Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson.

“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.

The Department of Justice has described the Wilmington effort as a “planned, consensual search.”

Some of the documents Biden was holding date back to his time as vice president while others are from his time as a senator.

While presidents have the authority to declassify materials, vice presidents and senators do not.

Materials with classified markings have also 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 investigate whether any person violated laws in the handling of the materials. Garland previously appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to probe Trump.

Biden on Wednesday was scheduled to receive the Presidential Daily Brief in the morning. In the afternoon, he was slated to meet with an economic council before hosting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for a closed-door meeting.

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