WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has been interviewed as part of an independent investigation into his handling of classified documents, the White House said late Monday.

Spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement that the interview was voluntary and conducted at the White House on Sunday and Monday. The interview concluded Monday, Sams said.

The investigation is being led by special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the politically sensitive matter to avoid conflicts of interest.

Sams reiterated that Biden and the White House are cooperating. He referred questions to the Justice Department.

“As we have said from the beginning, the President and the White House are cooperating with this investigation, and as it has been appropriate, we have provided relevant updates publicly, being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation,” Sams said. “We would refer other questions to the Justice Department at this time.”

It is hardly unprecedented for sitting presidents to be interviewed in criminal investigations.

President George W. Bush sat for a 70-minute interview as part of an investigation into the leak of the identify of a CIA operative. President Bill Clinton in 1998 underwent more than four hours of questioning from independent counsel Kenneth Starr before a federal grand jury.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team negotiated with lawyers for then-President Donald Trump for an interview but Trump never sat for one. His lawyers instead submitted answers to written questions.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post President Biden interviewed as part of special counsel investigation into classified documents appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

New charges — and a new defendant — added to the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump underscore how the Mar-a-Lago investigation is still very much ongoing, even as the focus has been on an expected indictment in a separate case related to the 2020 election.

In an updated indictment handed down Thursday, prosecutors allege that Trump asked a staffer to delete camera footage at his Florida estate in an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into his possession of classified documents.

The indictment includes new counts of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information. Prosecutors also added a third defendant to the case: Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, who they say schemed with Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, to conceal the footage from investigators.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and a spokesperson dismissed the new charges as “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him” and to influence the 2024 presidential race.

Here’s the latest on Trump’s new charges and where his other legal cases stand:

‘THE BOSS’ SAID TO DO IT

The new indictment alleges that Trump demanded that security footage at his Mar-a-Lago estate be deleted after investigators visited in June 2022 to collect classified documents he took with him after the left the White House.

The indictment says that in late June 2022, De Oliveira took another employee to a small room known as an “audio closet” and told the other employee the conversation should remain between the two of them. De Oliveira asked the employee how many days the server retained surveillance footage and said “the boss” wanted the server deleted. When the employee said he didn’t believe he was able to do that, De Oliveira insisted the “boss” wanted it done, asking, “What are we going to do?”

The coded language and talk about needing to carry out the boss’ wishes is reminiscent of how others, including former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, have described life inside Trump’s inner circle. Once Trump’s fixer, Cohen has likened Trump to a mob boss, who would bully others into doing his bidding but would speak in “code” and never directly tell them to do something wrong.

Cohen, who served time in prison in another special counsel’s investigation, testified as a key prosecution witness in the unrelated New York hush-money case against Trump.

An attorney for De Oliveira declined to comment Thursday.

CHANGE IN APPROACH

The new charges against Trump include an additional count of willfully retaining national defense information related to a presentation about military activity in another country. Investigators say Trump showed off that document during July 2021 meeting at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort with the writer and publisher of the memoir of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Details about that document and the meeting were included in the original indictment, but none of the charges had related to it until now.

Trump had returned that document to the government on Jan. 17, 2022 — nearly a year after he left office, according to the indictment.

Bringing the charge marks a shift in the prosecution’s approach, with the Justice Department charging him with holding onto a document they say he knew was highly sensitive after he left office, but returned to the government before the FBI opened its criminal investigation in March 2022.

The charges Trump was already facing stemmed from documents prosecutors say Trump was illegally hoarding at Mar-a-Lago after the federal grand jury investigation began.

Prosecutors allege that during the July 2021 meeting at Bedminster, Trump had waved around the classified attack plan to his guests. “This is secret information,” he said, according to a recording cited in the documents, claiming that, “as president I could have declassified it” but hadn’t.

Trump has since denied he had secret documents before him when he spoke.

TRIAL DELAY?

The addition of a third defendant could impact the trial date, which has already been a source of contention in the case.

Trump’s lawyers have claimed that he can’t get a fair trial before the 2024 election, while prosecutors had wanted the case to go to trial in December.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, in a compromise last week, scheduled the trial to begin in May. If it holds that date could mean a trial will not start until deep into the presidential nominating calendar, and probably well after the Republican nominee is clear — though before that person is officially nominated at the Republican National Convention.

But adding De Oliveira to the case may lead to that getting pushed back.

“It will be just about impossible to keep all of the scheduled deadlines with a new defendant coming in,” said David Oscar Markus, a criminal defense attorney in Miami who is not involved in the case.

In a separate court filing Thursday, prosecutors wrote that the new charges “should not disturb” the May trial date, “and the Special Counsel’s Office is taking steps related to discovery and security clearances to ensure that it does not do so.”

But Trump will likely use the new charges — and new evidence prosecutors say they have against him — in a renewed effort to delay the trial.

MORE POTENTIAL CHARGES LOOMING

News of the indictment came just hours after Trump’s attorneys met with members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team ahead of the expected indictment over the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Trump said on his Truth Social network that his attorneys “had a productive meeting” and that “no indication of notice was given during the meeting.”

Trump disclosed earlier this month that he had received a letter from the Justice Department advising him that he was a target of the agency’s election-related investigation. Such letters often precede criminal charges.

The status of the secretive grand jury proceedings remained unclear Thursday, despite building speculation that a criminal case could be near. In a sign of heightened expectations, police officers were photographed gathered outside the courthouse.

MORE LEGAL WOES ON THE HORIZON

The federal investigations are far from Trump’s only legal worries.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has said any indictments resulting from her two-year investigation into whether Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia would likely come next month.

In October, a civil trial is scheduled to begin in New York state court, where New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Trump and the Trump Organization, alleging they misled banks and tax authorities about the value of assets including golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits.

Trump scheduled to stand trial in March in a New York hush money case. He’s pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, which are linked to a series of checks that were written to his lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for his role in paying off porn actor Stormy Daniels, who alleged a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Donald Trump faces new charges in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Here’s what to know appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department asked a judge on Friday night to postpone until December the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump for retaining classified documents.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon earlier this week set an initial trial date of Aug. 14 for Trump, who faces 37 felony counts accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents and obstructing Justice Department efforts to get them back.

Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith’s team asked Cannon to reschedule the trial for Dec. 11. They said the delay was necessary because the case involves classified information and will require Trump’s lawyers to obtain security clearances, a process that is underway.

The Justice Department said this week that it has begun sharing with the Trump legal team evidence relevant to the case.

But, they said in their Friday filing, “Even with the prompt production the government has arranged, the inclusion of additional time for defense counsel to review and digest the discovery, to make their own decisions about any production to the government, and for the government to review the same, is reasonable and appropriate.”

The Justice Department said Trump’s lawyers do not object to pushing the trial date back. The judge will ultimately set the trial date.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Justice Department proposes December trial date for Trump in classified documents case appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Wednesday night that it had begun turning over evidence to former President Donald Trump’s legal team as his lawyers prepare a defense to charges that he illegally retained classified documents.

The evidence includes transcripts of grand jury testimony taken in both Washington and Florida, copies of closed-circuit television footage obtained by the government and copies of interviews of Trump “conducted by non-government entities, which were recorded with his consent and obtained” by the prosecution team of special counsel Jack Smith.

The interviews include an audio-recorded July 2021 meeting with a writer and publisher at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club in which Trump, according to the indictment, showed and described a Pentagon “plan of attack” that he said was prepared for him by the Defense Department. Also turned over to Trump’s lawyers are public statements he made that are referenced in the indictment.

Trump was indicted this month on 37 felony charges, including 31 counts under the Espionage Act that accuse him of willfully retaining national defense information. He has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.

The sharing of information and evidence between parties is routine in a court case so that lawyers can prepare a defense. Earlier this week, a federal magistrate imposed a protective order to restrict the public disclosure of evidence that Trump receives through the information-sharing process, known as discovery.

The judge in the case, Aileen Cannon, set an initial trial date of Aug. 14, though that date is expected to slip considerably given the complicated disputes ahead over the scope of evidence in the case.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Justice Dept. begins turning over evidence to Trump team in classified documents case appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

MIAMI (AP) — Donald Trump became the first former president to face a judge on federal charges as he pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom Tuesday to dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding classified documents and refusing government demands to give them back.

The history-making court date, centered on charges that Trump mishandled government secrets that as commander-in-chief he was entrusted to protect, kickstarts a legal process that will unfold at the height of the 2024 presidential campaign and carry profound consequences not only for his political future but also for his own personal liberty.

Trump approached his arraignment with characteristic bravado, posting social media broadsides against the prosecution from inside his motorcade en route to the courthouse and insisting — as he has through years of legal woes — that he has done nothing wrong and was being persecuted for political purposes. But inside the courtroom, he sat silently, scowling and arms crossed, as a lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf in a brief arraignment that ended without him having to surrender his passport or otherwise restrict his travel.

The arraignment, though largely procedural in nature, was the latest in an unprecedented reckoning this year for Trump, who faces charges in New York arising from hush money payments during his 2016 presidential campaign as well as ongoing investigations in Washington and Atlanta into efforts to undo the results of the 2020 race.

Always in campaign mode, he swiftly pivoted from the solemn courtroom to a festive restaurant, stopping on his way out of Miami at Versailles, an iconic Cuban spot in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood where supporters serenaded Trump, who turns 77 on Wednesday, with “Happy Birthday.” The back-to-back events highlight the tension for Trump in the months ahead as he balances the pageantry of campaigning with courtroom stops accompanying his status as a twice-indicted criminal defendant.

Yet the gravity of the moment was unmistakable.

Until last week, no former president had ever been charged by the Justice Department, let alone accused of mishandling top-secret information. The indictment unsealed last week charged Trump with 37 felony counts — many under the Espionage Act — that accuse him of illegally storing classified documents in his bedroom, bathroom, shower and other locations at Mar-a-Lago and trying to hide them from the Justice Department as investigators demanded them back. The charges carry a yearslong prison sentence in the event of a conviction.

Trump has relied on a familiar playbook of painting himself as a victim of political persecution. He attacked the Justice Department special counsel who filed the case as a “thug” and “deranged,” pledged to remain in the race no matter what and addressed supporters Tuesday night at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, where he delivered a roughly half-hour speech full of repeated falsehoods and incendiary rhetoric and threatened to go after President Joe Biden and his family if elected.

“The seal is broken by what they’ve done. They should never have done this,” Trump said of the indictment.

But Attorney General Merrick Garland, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sought to insulate the department from political attacks by handing ownership of the case last November to a special counsel, Jack Smith, who on Friday declared, “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”

Smith attended Tuesday’s arraignment, sitting in the front row behind his team of prosecutors.

The court appearance unfolded against angst over potential protests, with some high-profile backers using barbed rhetoric to voice support. Though city officials said they prepared for possible unrest, there were few signs of significant disruption.

Trump didn’t say a word during the court appearance, other than to occasionally turn and whisper to his attorneys who were seated on either side of him. He fiddled with a pen and clasped his hands on the table in front of him as the lawyers and the judge debated the conditions of his release.

While he was not required to surrender a passport — prosecutors said he was not considered a flight risk — the magistrate judge presiding over the arraignment directed Trump to not discuss the case with certain witnesses. That includes Walt Nauta, his valet who was indicted last week on charges that he moved boxes of documents at Trump’s direction and misled the FBI about it.

Nauta did not enter a plea Tuesday because he did not have a local lawyer with him.

Trump attorney Todd Blanche objected to the idea of imposing restrictions on the former president’s contact with possible witnesses, noting they include many people close to Trump, including staff and members of his protection detail.

“Many of the people he interacts with on a daily basis — including the men and women who protect him — are potential witnesses in this case,” Blanche said.

Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong, showed no emotion as he was led by law enforcement out of the courtroom through a side door.

Even for a man whose presidency and post-White House life have been defined by criminal investigations, the documents probe had long stood out both because of the volume of evidence that prosecutors had seemed to amass and the severity of the allegations.

A federal grand jury in Washington had heard testimony for months, but the Justice Department filed the case in Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located and where many of the alleged acts of obstruction occurred.

Though Trump appeared Tuesday before a federal magistrate, the case has been assigned to a District Court judge he appointed, Aileen Cannon, who ruled in his favor last year in a dispute over whether an outside special master could be appointed to review the seized classified documents. A federal appeals panel ultimately overturned her ruling.

It’s unclear what defenses Trump is likely to invoke as the case moves forward. Two of his lead lawyers announced their resignation the morning after his indictment, and the notes and recollections of another attorney, M. Evan Corcoran, are cited repeatedly throughout the 49-page charging document, suggesting prosecutors envision him as a potential key witness.

The indictment Friday accuses Trump of illegally retaining national security documents that he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in January 2021. The documents he stored, prosecutors say, included material on nuclear programs, defense and weapons capabilities of the U.S. and foreign governments and a Pentagon “attack plan,” prosecutors say. He is accused of showing off some to people who didn’t have security clearances to view them.

Beyond that, according to the indictment, he repeatedly sought to obstruct government efforts to recover the documents, including by directing Nauta to move boxes and also suggesting to his own lawyer that he hide or destroy documents sought by a Justice Department subpoena.

___

Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Bedminster, New Jersey and Terry Spencer, Kate Brumback, Curt Anderson and Joshua Goodman in Miami, contributed to this report.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Trump pleads not guilty to federal charges that he illegally kept classified documents appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

MIAMI (AP) — Donald Trump has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, a remarkable development that makes him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges by the federal government that he once oversaw.

The Justice Department was expected to make public a seven-count indictment ahead of a historic court appearance next week in the midst of a 2024 presidential campaign punctuated by criminal prosecutions in multiple states.

The indictment carries unmistakably grave legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if Trump’s convicted.

But it also has enormous political implications, potentially upending a Republican presidential primary that Trump had been dominating and testing anew the willingness of GOP voters and party leaders to stick with a now twice-indicted candidate who could face still more charges. And it sets the stage for a sensational trial centered on claims that a man once entrusted to safeguard the nation’s most closely guarded secrets willfully, and illegally, hoarded sensitive national security information.

The Justice Department did not immediately confirm the indictment publicly. But two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly said that the indictment included seven criminal counts. One of those people said Trump’s lawyers were contacted by prosecutors shortly before he announced Thursday on his Truth Social platform that he had been indicted.

Within minutes of his announcement, Trump, who said he was due in court Tuesday afternoon in Miami, began fundraising off it for his presidential campaign. He declared his innocence in a video and repeated his familiar refrain that the investigation is a “witch hunt.”

The case adds to deepening legal jeopardy for Trump, who has already been indicted in New York and faces additional investigations in Washington and Atlanta that also could lead to criminal charges. But among the various investigations he faces, legal experts — as well as Trump’s own aides — had long seen the Mar-a-Lago probe as the most perilous threat and the one most ripe for prosecution. Campaign aides had been bracing for the fallout since Trump’s attorneys were notified that he was the target of the investigation, assuming it was not a matter of if charges would be brought, but when.

Appearing Thursday night on CNN, Trump attorney James Trusty said the indictment includes charges of willful retention of national defense information — a crime under the Espionage Act, which polices the handling of government secrets — obstruction, false statements and conspiracy.

The inquiry took a major step forward last November when Attorney General Merrick Garland, a soft-spoken former federal judge who has long stated that no one person should be regarded as above the law, appointed Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor with an aggressive, hard-charging reputation to lead both the documents probe as well as a separate investigation into efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

The case is a milestone for a Justice Department that had investigated Trump for years — as president and private citizen — but had never before charged him with a crime. The most notable investigation was an earlier special counsel probe into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia, but prosecutors in that probe cited Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. Once he left office, though, he lost that protection.

The indictment arises from a monthslong investigation into whether Trump broke the law by holding onto hundreds of documents marked classified at his Palm Beach property, Mar-a-Lago, and whether Trump took steps to obstruct the government’s efforts to recover the records.

Prosecutors have said that Trump took roughly 300 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, including some 100 that were seized by the FBI last August in a search of the home that underscored the gravity of the Justice Department’s investigation. Trump has repeatedly insisted that he was entitled to keep the classified documents when he left the White House, and has also claimed without evidence that he had declassified them.

Court records unsealed last year showed federal investigators believed they had probable cause that multiple crimes had been committed, including the retention of national defense information, destruction of government records and obstruction.

Since then, the Justice Department has amassed additional evidence and secured grand jury testimony from people close to Trump, including his own lawyers. The statutes governing the handling of classified records and obstruction are felonies that could carry years in prison in the event of a conviction.

Even so, it remains unclear how much it will damage Trump’s standing given that his first indictment generated millions of dollars in contributions from angry supporters and didn’t weaken him in the polls.

The former president has long sought to use his legal troubles to his political advantage, complaining on social media and at public events that the cases are being driven by Democratic prosecutors out to hurt his 2024 election campaign. He is likely to rely on that playbook again, reviving his longstanding claims that the Justice Department — which, during his presidency, investigated whether his 2016 campaign had colluded with Russia — is somehow weaponized against him.

Trump’s legal troubles extend beyond the New York indictment and classified documents case.

Smith is separately investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And the district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County is investigating Trump over alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election in that state.

Signs had mounted for weeks that an indictment was near, including a Monday meeting between Trump’s lawyers and Justice Department officials. His lawyers had also recently been notified that he was the target of the investigation, the clearest sign yet that an indictment was looming.

Though the bulk of the investigative work had been handled in Washington, with a grand jury meeting there for months, it recently emerged that prosecutors were presenting evidence before a separate panel in Florida, where many of the alleged acts of obstruction scrutinized by prosecutors took place.

The Justice Department has said Trump repeatedly resisted efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to get the documents back. After months of back-and-forth, Trump representatives returned 15 boxes of records in January 2022, including about 184 documents that officials said had classified markings on them.

FBI and Justice Department investigators issued a subpoena in May 2022 for classified documents that remained in Trump’s possession. But after a Trump lawyer provided three dozen records and asserted that a diligent search of the property had been done, officials came to suspect even more documents remained.

The investigation had simmered for months before bursting into front-page news in remarkable fashion last August. That’s when FBI agents served a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago and removed 33 boxes containing classified records, including top-secret documents stashed in a storage room and desk drawer and commingled with personal belongings. Some records were so sensitive that investigators needed upgraded security clearances to review them, the Justice Department has said.

The investigation into Trump had appeared complicated — politically, if not legally — by the discovery of documents with classified markings in the Delaware home and former Washington office of President Joe Biden, as well as in the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence. The Justice Department recently informed Pence that he would not face charges, while a second special counsel continues to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents.

But compared with Trump, there are key differences in the facts and legal issues surrounding Biden’s and Pence’s handling of documents, including that representatives for both men say the documents were voluntarily turned over to investigators as soon as they were found. In contrast, investigators quickly zeroed on whether Trump, who for four years as president expressed disdain for the FBI and Justice Department, had sought to obstruct the inquiry by refusing to turn over all the requested documents.

_____

Tucker reported from Washington. Colvin reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Trump indicted in classified documents case in a historic first for a former president appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Wednesday without turning up any classified documents, the latest turn in an extraordinary series of searches of his and his predecessor’s properties.

Agents did take some handwritten notes and other materials relating to Biden’s time as vice president for review, just as they had when they searched his Wilmington home last month where they also found classified items. Investigators searched his former office at a Washington think tank that bears his name in November, but it isn’t clear whether they took anything.

The Biden searches, conducted with his blessing, have come as investigators work to determine how classified information from his time as a senator and vice president came to wind up in his home and former office — and whether any mishandling involved criminal intent or was merely a mistake in a city where unauthorized treatment of classified documents is not unheard-of.

Law enforcement searches of property are a routine part of criminal probes, but there is nothing ordinary about the FBI scouring a sitting president’s home, even as Biden and his aides have sought to contrast his actions with those of his predecessor.

Former President Donald Trump is facing a special counsel criminal investigation into his retention of several hundred classified documents and other government records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida — and his resistance to giving them up, which led to an FBI warrant and search to seize them last August.

On Wednesday, Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer said FBI agents authorized by the Department of Justice spent three and a half hours searching the president’s beach home and that “no documents with classified markings were found.”

In a statement disclosing the search, Bauer sought to portray Biden and his team as fully transparent and cooperative. He described the search as “planned” and “a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate.”

He did not mention Trump by name, but the statement seemed aimed at juxtaposing the Biden investigation with the Trump case, where months of fruitless Justice Department efforts to recover all the classified records taken to the former president’s Florida estate culminated in the August search warrant and removal of nearly three dozen boxes of documents and other items.

Searches of Biden’s former office and Delaware homes, by contrast, have all been done voluntarily and without a warrant. But the fact the FBI did its own search reflected the Justice Department’s determination to retrieve any and all possible classified items rather than rely on assurances that such documents had been located.

Biden has said he was surprised by the initial trove discovered by his lawyers in November when they were cleaning out an office inside the Penn Biden Center.

The latest search follows the FBI’s 13-hour, top-to-bottom check of his Wilmington, Delaware, home, where agents located documents with classified markings from his time as a vice president and senator and also took possession of some of his handwritten notes.

One week earlier, Biden’s personal lawyers revealed that they had found a document bearing classified markings while searching the Wilmington property but said they had not found others during a separate inspection of the Rehoboth Beach home.

The White House did not disclose the Justice Department’s investigation until last month, when it acknowledged the Nov. 2 discovery of a “small number” of classified documents by Biden lawyers as they closed an office at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank affiliated with the Ivy League school.

Though officials have not disclosed this, The Associated Press and other news organizations reported on Tuesday that the FBI had conducted a voluntary search of that office later in November.

The administration’s public response has been delayed and incomplete. There are many unanswered questions – on what information the documents contained, exactly how many were discovered and why he had them in his possession, despite Biden’s attorneys and the White House Counsel’s insistence they are being as transparent as possible with the public.

“I think we’ve been pretty transparent from the very beginning,” a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s office, Ian Sams, said Wednesday. “We want to be careful to be very respectful of the integrity of that ongoing investigation.”

Sams reiterated that Biden was working with Justice investigators.

“The president has been fully cooperative in offering unprecedented access to his home … every single room of his home in Rehoboth as well as the one in Wilmington,” he said.

The Justice Department declined comment on the Wednesday search.

Biden’s lawyers have described the retention of the records as a “mistake.” The Justice Department has historically brought criminal charges related to mishandling of classified records only when it can establish, among other things, that a person acted knowingly in improperly removing or storing sensitive records.

The Biden documents probe is being handled by a special counsel, Robert Hur, a former senior Justice Department official during the Trump administration who served as the top federal prosecutor in Baltimore. He is starting his work this week, inheriting a months-long investigation already undertaken by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors.

Attorney General Merrick Garland had assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago, John Lausch, to conduct an initial review before announcing Hur’s appointment last month.

In a separate effort that preceded the Biden probe, special counsel Jack Smith is investigating the retention by Trump of roughly 300 documents with classified markings that were taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. Agents last August obtained a search warrant to recover classified documents following what the Justice Department said were months of resistance by Trump and his representatives to return the records to the government.

Investigators in the Biden case have already conducted interviews, including of Biden’s former executive assistant who helped oversee the packing of boxes that went to the Penn Biden Center. It is not yet clear if and when the Justice Department might look to question Biden himself.

The Bidens purchased their Rehoboth Beach home, which overlooks a state park adjacent to the beach, in June 2017, months after he left the vice presidency.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post FBI searches Biden’s vacation home; no classified documents appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.