US President Joe Biden's lawyer said Saturday evening that Justice Department investigators found 6 additional confidential documents during a search of the president's home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Attorney Bob Bauer confirmed in a statement that some of the classified documents date back to Biden's term in the Senate, where he represented Delaware from 1973 to 2009.
Power added that other documents date back to Biden's tenure as vice president in former President Barack Obama's administration from 2009 to 2017.
He said that the inspection process lasted about 12 hours in the absence of the president and his wife, and included all working, living and storage spaces in the house, noting that members of the legal team and the Office of the White House Counsellor were present during the inspection process.
Bauer stressed that President Biden and members of his personal legal team are taking the matter responsibly and working to ensure that the Department of Justice and the special counsel get what they need.
These documents are added to a group of other secret government files - which were previously discovered during this January - that the president was keeping in a think tank in Washington, D.C., after his tenure as vice president ended.
An embarrassment to the Democrats
The case is embarrassing because Democrats have directed a lot of criticism at former Republican President Donald Trump, who is under judicial investigation, for keeping more than 100 confidential documents at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, despite his departure from Washington in 2021.
Last Thursday, Biden downplayed the uproar over the discovery of old classified documents stored inappropriately among his private possessions, saying, "There is nothing."
In response to a question about this issue put to him by reporters on his way to California, Biden replied, "Listen, we found some documents (...) that had been stored in the wrong place and we immediately handed them over to the Archives Department and the Department of Justice. We are fully cooperating and looking forward to resolving this quickly."
"I think you will find there is nothing. I have no regrets. I do what the lawyers said they wanted me to do. That's exactly what we do," he added.
And US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he had appointed an independent prosecutor to investigate the case of documents found with Biden, just as he did in the same case facing Trump, to dispel suspicions of double standards.
But the Republican opposition took advantage of its narrow majority in the House of Representatives, launched a parliamentary investigation, and demanded more information.