President Joe Biden’s legal team found additional classified documents when they searched an additional location after finding secret government papers in a different Biden office in early November, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Earlier this week, a lawyer for Biden said the president’s personal lawyers had discovered a small number of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, an institute in downtown Washington that Biden started after serving as vice president. People familiar with the matter said that discovery involved about 10 classified documents.
Biden’s lawyers notified government agencies, and the Justice Department opened an investigation to see how the classified material got there and whether there was any other material that should be under government lock and key.
Legal representatives for the president found additional classified material at a second location, a person said Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The person would not say when that material was found.
The second batch of classified material was first reported by NBC News.
Earlier in the day, a White House spokeswoman refused to say if any additional classified material had been found beyond the batch at the Penn Biden Center. Spokespeople for the Justice Department, the FBI and the White House declined to comment.
White House officials have said they are cooperating with the Justice Department, and that Biden’s lawyers quickly handed over the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration — the agency tasked with handling presidential records.
A Biden lawyer said the classified documents at the Penn Biden Center were found on Nov. 2, when one of his personal attorneys opened a locked closet to pack up the contents. The White House Counsel’s office notified the archives, who took possession of the documents the following day, a Biden lawyer said.
That discovery came not long before Attorney General General Merrick Garland tapped a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee the agency’s criminal investigation into former president Donald Trump’s possible mishandling of hundreds of classified documents that were taken to Mar-a-Lago after his presidency ended. Officials have said the investigation of Trump concerns not just the possible mishandling of government secrets, but also possible obstruction of justice or destruction of records.
To review the Biden classified documents issue, Garland tapped U.S. Attorney John R. Lausch Jr. of Chicago, a holdover from the Trump administration. Depending on what this initial investigation yields, Garland could decide to appoint a special counsel.
While the Biden case has obvious echoes of the Mar-a-Lago investigation into Trump’s conduct, the details provided by Biden’s lawyer on Monday suggest key differences that could factor heavily in whether the Biden documents become a criminal matter.
Biden’s lawyer Richard Sauber said the Biden documents were discovered by the president’s lawyers and voluntarily turned over to authorities. By comparison, in Trump’s case, NARA officials pressed for material to be handed over, and then Trump’s office was served with a grand jury subpoena demanding their return. After Trump’s lawyers delivered 38 classified documents in response to the subpoena, an FBI search recovered more than 100 additional classified documents that were not turned over to authorities.
Much of the criminal investigation into the keeping of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence, has centered on what officials have described in court papers as possible obstruction of the efforts to recover all of the documents. So far, no such allegation has been leveled in the Biden matter, though it is at an earlier stage.
Legal experts say that it is not uncommon for some people who have security clearances to mishandle classified documents. But these situations are typically handled administratively, not criminally, because the criteria for prosecuting people who mishandle classified documents include proving that the person deliberately flouted rules for how to secure the materials.
Biden opened the Penn Biden Center in February 2018 as a think tank for the University of Pennsylvania in Washington, attracting some of the country’s top foreign policy experts and lawmakers.