President Joe Biden’s administration, despite repeated insistence to the contrary, had been decidedly less than transparent or voluntary in divulging relevant information about the continuously developing and worsening classified documents scandal.
Now it has been revealed, through yet another leak to the media, that the FBI actually conducted a search of Biden’s former office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington D.C. in mid-November, the Daily Wire reported.
The White House had never publicly disclosed or even alluded to the FBI search of the president’s former office space in any of its prior statements or answers to media queries, even as it has routinely insisted that it has been fully transparent about everything with the American people.
FBI searched Biden office in November
CBS News reported Tuesday that, per two unnamed sources “familiar” with the matter, the FBI quietly conducted a search for classified documents at the Penn Biden Center in D.C. in mid-November, just a few weeks after personal attorneys for President Biden had found documents marked as classified from his time as vice president in the Obama administration.
No search warrant had been issued since Biden’s team had been cooperative and consented to the FBI’s sweep of the previously used office space.
It is unclear if anything of note was recovered in that search, which until now had not been disclosed by Biden’s team of personal attorneys, the White House, or the Justice Department.
That differs from the reported search on Jan. 20 of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, in which additional classified materials were seized — despite claims from Biden’s team that a complete and thorough search had already uncovered and turned over everything — and was revealed the following day by the president’s personal attorneys.
DOJ previously announced an “assessment” that was actually an FBI search
CNN also reported on the belated revelation through leaks of the mid-November search of the Penn Biden Center by FBI agents and how that contradicts and undermines the White House claims of transparency.
As it turns out, though, per an unnamed Justice Department official, while the White House remained tight-lipped about that search, the DOJ did notify the public, albeit in a manner that played on semantics to disguise what had actually occurred.
The official noted that Attorney General Merrick Garland had previously said in a statement that outlined the timeline of events, “On November 9, the FBI commenced an assessment, consistent with standard protocols, to understand whether classified information had been mishandled in violation of federal law.”
That “assessment,” per the anonymous DOJ source, was the word used to describe the search by FBI agents of the president’s former office space in D.C.
“Why the continued trickle of disclosure?”
Meanwhile, Fox News reported that CNN host Victor Blackwell actually called out the Biden administration’s lack of transparency during a Tuesday interview with White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield, who infuriatingly attempted to dodge Blackwell’s questions and laughably kept up the now provably false claim that the White House has been “cooperative and transparent from the outset.”
“So, Kate, you’re claiming transparency, but I’m bringing this to you, you aren’t bringing it to me,” Blackwell said. “This happened in mid-November. If you are indeed being transparent, why the continued trickle of disclosure around these classified documents?”
“That’s not something I can comment on from here. That’s something you’ll need to ask the Justice Department,” Bedingfield said, according to CBS News. “What I can say is that we have been cooperative and transparent from the outset. We put out multiple statements from the president’s personal attorney describing the process and being clear that the president takes this seriously, and that he cooperated and will continue to cooperate with the Justice Department in full.”
