Takeaways from the FBI search of Biden’s home for classified material

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• John Yang:

  FBI search of President Biden's Wilmington, 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 a 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 Barron-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 Barron-Lopez:

  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. It lasted about, you know, almost 13 hours on Friday, January 20.

  And 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 Yang:

  This has been such a long running drama, saga feels. I think it's worth just to walk through this again, the timeline for the viewers.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  Yes, there have been a lot. This is technically the fifth discovery, and so let's go through this timeline of these classified documents. On November 2, 2022, Biden's attorneys found documents at Penn Biden Center, and they notified the National Archives. Then, on November 9, 2022, DOJ launches its assessment. On December 20 of 2022, Biden's attorneys again find documents, this time in his Wilmington garage. And they notified the DOJ immediately. January 11 of this year, 2023, Biden's attorneys find a single document in his Wilmington residence. January 12, 2023, DOJ takes possession of five additional documents, classified documents found at his Wilmington residence, the President's Wilmington residence. Then finally, again, as I just said, January 2023, the Justice Department officials searched the Wilmington residence and take possession of six items with classification marketing.

  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 Yang:

  Does this affect his legal liability in any way?

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  So I spoke to Mark Zaid, a national security attorney today, and he said that optics — optically, this is not good. Politically, this is not good for the president. But legally, the facts haven't really changed. Here's what he said.

• Mark Zaid, National Security Attorney:

  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 Barron-Lopez:

  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, you know, existed around, and 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, was 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 again, 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 Yang:

  Laura Barron-Lopez, our White House correspondent. Thank you very much.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  Thank you.