U.S. Secret Service agents are seen in front of Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., home on Jan. 12, 2021. The FBI is conducting a planned search of President Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents. That’s according to a statement from Biden’s personal lawyer.
Shannon McNaught | Delaware News Journal | AP
FBI agents on Wednesday morning searched the Rehoboth, Delaware, beach home of President Joe Biden for more than three hours, but found no documents marked classified, his personal lawyer said.
Agents “took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President,” Biden’s lawyer Bob Bauer said.
A senior law enforcement source who spoke with NBC News corroborated Bauer’s characterization of the outcome of the FBI’s search.
The planned, consensual search is the first publicly known time the FBI searched the Rehoboth residence. Agents did not obtain a warrant for the search, which began at 8:30 a.m. ET and ended at noon. They had not gotten warrants for two prior FBI searches of other locations linked to Biden.
The Department of Justice is investigating the discovery of classified documents at a private office in a Washington, D.C., think tank that Biden had used while a private citizen, and at his residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, previously said that the president’s lawyers searched the Rehoboth home and the Wilmington residence on Jan. 11.
Those attorneys found classified records in Wilmington, but not in Rehoboth, according to Bauer.
The FBI searched the think tank office in mid-November after Biden’s personal lawyers first found classified records there on Nov. 2. The FBI searched Biden’s Wilmington home on Jan. 20.
White House spokesman Ian Sams on Wednesday would not say how many classified documents in total have been found at the Biden-linked locations.
In an earlier statement Wednesday, Bauer said, “Today, with the President’s full support and cooperation, the DOJ is conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Delaware.”
US President Joe Biden rides a bike through Gordon’s Pond State Park in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on July 10, 2022.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images
“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,” the lawyer said.
“The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate,” Bauer said.
Bauer in a later statement confirmed the search had ended.
“No documents with classified markings were found,” Bauer said.
Ian Sams told reporters later, “I’m not going to speak to the negotiations or discussions or collaborations between the president’s personal attorney and the DOJ in establishing the search.”
“We’re cooperating fully with the Justice Department,” Sams said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel, Robert Hur, to oversee the investigation into the Biden documents.
Special Assistant To The President And Spokesperson For The White House Counsel’s Office Ian Sams calls on reporters outside the West Wing of the White House on February 01, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Garland last year appointed another special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified records and other government documents at the residence of former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
FBI agents on Aug. 9 found those documents during a raid at Mar-a-Lago. In that search, agents had obtained a warrant.
Lawyers for Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, two weeks ago notified the National Archives and Records Administration that they had found a “small number” of classified documents at his home in Carmel, Indiana, on Jan. 16.
— Additional reporting by CNBC’s Emma Kinery and Kevin Breuninger.