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US President Joe Biden’s lawyer said the FBI had not found any classified documents during a search of his Hobbs, Delaware home.
In a statement, Biden’s attorney said Wednesday’s search was “planned” with the president’s “full support.”
The nearly four-hour search is part of a wider investigation into the handling of classified documents.
The FBI has not yet commented on the search. As this was consensual, no search warrant was issued.
Biden’s lawyer, Bob Bauer, said the search was conducted “without advance notice to the public” for “the security and integrity of the operation.”
Ball said the search ran between 8:30 and 12:00 local time and “had not found any documents that have been identified as classified”.
Ball also said that what appeared to be “material and handwritten notes” from Biden’s time as vice president between 2009 and 2017 were taken for “further review”.
It is the latest in a series of searches at several locations following the discovery of classified documents at the offices of the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania in Washington, DC, in November. This was not public at the time.
Additional documents were found at another Biden residence in Wilmington, Delaware, during searches in December and January.
Although at least a dozen classified documents were uncovered in the January search alone, it is unclear exactly how many classified documents were uncovered.
Biden said his team did “what they were supposed to do” by notifying officials immediately and that they were fully cooperating with the investigation.
After the first raid in January, Biden told reporters that the documents were locked in a garage.
“They are not on the street,” he said.
The latest raid comes a day after special counsel Robert Hur officially began overseeing the investigation into the documents.
Former President of the United States, Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence have also been disputed over classified documents.
In Pence’s case, a “small number of classified documents” were found at his home in Carmel, Indiana, according to a letter his attorney sent to the National Archives and Records Administration. On January 19, the FBI retrieved the documents from a safe at the property. On January 23, two more boxes of documents were sent to the National Archives.
In August 2022, China’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida found dozens of boxes and about 11,000 documents, about 100 of which were marked as classified.
Before the search warrant was issued, Trump’s lawyer said all government records had been returned. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has claimed to have declassified the documents he had with him.
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By Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America correspondent
The Justice Department’s search of Biden’s vacation home has added a new twist to the nearly month-long saga of classified documents now being overseen by a special counsel.
The FBI’s move could reveal how quickly and thoroughly Biden’s team was reviewing documents stored in his personal home. For the most part, Biden’s lawyers have been conducting their own inspections of the president’s private residences, without the close watch of government investigators. While they found classified material at the president’s home in Wilmington, they said no such documents were found at the president’s beachfront residence.
At the very least, the search would help ease some concerns expressed by Republicans that the administration is subject to less scrutiny and suspicion of Biden than Trump. Last August, the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. When Biden’s lawyers first disclosed that they had found classified material in Biden’s home and private office, former president and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other conservatives publicly questioned why the current president had not been the target of administration investigators.
But now Biden’s defenders point out that several of Biden’s properties have been searched, but there is no indication that the FBI has investigated Trump’s homes in New Jersey and New York.
