The Justice Department considered but decided against sending FBI agents to President Joe Biden’s Delaware home to monitor his attorneys’ search for classified documents, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The detail was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Both the president’s attorneys and the Justice Department agreed to instead have Biden’s lawyers conduct the searches for classified documents, according to the sources.
It was something both sides agreed to, sources said, in part because Biden and his attorneys were cooperating with the Justice Department.
In three separate searches beginning in November, Biden’s lawyers found classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and post-vice presidential office in Washington, D.C., according to the White House, which has described the materials as being kept from Biden’s vice presidency.
The revelation of classified documents found at Biden’s home led Attorney General Merrick Garland last week to appoint a special counsel to review Biden’s handling of classified materials.
The Justice Department and the FBI are declining to comment on the discussions.
The mixture of incomplete and shifting statements out of the White House in the weeklong span since the story broke has drawn parallels to the torrent of increasingly damning details that emerged immediately following the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August.
Due to the ongoing nature of a criminal investigation, the Justice Department and special counsel’s office won’t comment on the distinctions between the two matters, citing longstanding department policy.
No evidence, so far, to support Biden search, experts say
But legal experts, including former federal prosecutors reached by ABC News, say at least so far, that for Biden there doesn’t appear to be evidence that would justify the dramatic and unprecedented step of the FBI seeking a search warrant on the current president’s private residence.
To do so, as they did for Trump, prosecutors would have to persuade a federal judge that there’s probable cause that by conducting a search they would find evidence of a crime or multiple crimes.
