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John: An FBI search of president
Biden's Wilmington's Delaware
home turned up yet more
classified material.
The Friday search was
coordinated between the FBI and
Mr. Biden's personal attorney.
It underscores the seriousness
of the special counsel's
investigation into Mr Biden's
handling of classified material
from his days both as vice
president and as senator.
White house correspondent Laura
Barone Lopez is here.
Laura, this is an FBI search of
a sitting president's home.
How did this come about? And
what did they find?
Laura: President Biden's
personal attorney, Bob Bauer,
offered this search to FBI
investigators, saying that
they've been trying to cooperate
as much as possible from the
very beginning, and thought that
-- it lasted about, almost 13
hours on Friday, January 20th.
Essentially what they found was
six items they said that
included some classification
markings.
We don't know if that's six
documents, if it's more than six
documents, but they found that
during the search and they took
that into their possession.
John: This has been such a long
saga.
It is worth to walk through the
timeline for the viewers.
Laura: This is technically the
fifth discovery.
Let's go through the timeline.
November 2, 2022, Bidens
attorneys found documents at
Penn Biden center, and they
notified the national archives.
Then on November 9th 2022 doj
lunches its assessment.
On December 20, 2022, Bidens
attorneys again find documents
this time in his Wilmington's
garage, and they notified the
doj immediately. January 11th of
this year, 2023, Biden's
attorneys find a single document
in his Wilmington residence.
January 12, doj takes possession
of five additional documents
classified documents found at
his Wilmington residence.
As I just said January, 20th
2023, the justice department
officials searched the
Wilmington residence and take
possession of six items with
classification markings.
So again, we don't know if
that's six documents. They also
took some personal handwritten
notes that president Biden wrote
during his time as vice
president and I should note that
those six items they said, also
included some material during
his time in the senate.
John: Does this affect his legal
liability?
Laura: So I spoke to mark zaid
who is a national security
attorney.
He says optically this is not
good.
Politically this is not good for
the president. But legally. The
facts haven't really changed.
>> I'm not really concerned from
a legal standpoint that this
enhances any likelihood of
justice department action.
In fact, in many ways, it does
the exact opposite.
The level of cooperation and
voluntarily allowing FBI agents
to search a sitting president's
residence, and come up with
additional classified records,
well, that at least minimizes
the prosecutorial concerns.
It just maximizes,
unfortunately, how horrible the
optics are.
Laura: So I also asked attorney
mark zaid about these personal,
handwritten notes that were
taken into possession by the
doj.
He said it's very normal for FBI
investigators to take anything
within the time period that they
see that these classifications,
classified documents existed
around, and that that's what
they do, because they want to
determine if there's anything
else, potentially, within those
handwritten notes that could
have some classified material.
The other thing he said, though,
is that these documents could
very well not be classified
anymore, that maybe they were
classified at the time but not
really have classified material
in them anymore.
And he noted that the cases are
still very different between
president Biden and president
trump, namely because of how the
two handled what happened after
these classified materials were
found, and that former president
trump obstructed, and that's one
of the big potential charges
that he's facing from his
special counsel investigation.
John: Laura borough Lopez, our
white house correspondent. Thank
you very much.