Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time,” criticized “shady” President Joe Biden during his most recent broadcast over the classified document scandal that has recently engulfed the administration.
“This documents thing — now look, was Biden shady with the documents? Absolutely,” Maher said. “The fact that they found them before the midterm elections and they didn’t talk about it… ”
“Two months,” one of Maher’s guests interjected.
“Two months — OK, very shady,” Maher continued. “I call shady on both sides. Now, of course, it was very different. When Trump got caught with documents, he said, ‘I’m not gonna turn them over.’ He didn’t cooperate. Biden cooperated. But the fact that Hunter Biden was in the house was all a conspiracy theorist needs to know.”
Federal officials confirmed late Saturday night that the FBI conducted the 13-hour search of Biden’s Delaware home on Friday, where they found more classified material.
The White House said the search was not the subject of a warrant or court-authorized process and was instead voluntary.
“The FBI executed a planned, consensual search of the President’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware,” said Assistant US Attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick.
“POTUS’s lawyers offered to provide DOJ prompt access to the Wilmington home, and gave DOJ full access to it, including personally handwritten notes, memorabilia, and papers going back decades,” said Ian Sams, Special Assistant to the President & Senior Advisor to White House Counsel’s Office.
“DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President,” Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal lawyer, said in a statement. “DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”
Bauer said the FBI asked the White House not to comment on the search until it was over. Bauer claimed that the FBI “had full access to the President’s home, including personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules, and reminders going back decades.”
Classified documents connected with Biden were first found in his former office at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., on November 2, less than a week before the 2022 midterm elections. Since then, Biden’s attorneys have located more classified documents at Biden’s Delaware home on three separate occasions: an unspecified number found in the garage on December 20, one document found in Biden’s study on January 11, and five more in the study on January 12.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur — who served during the Trump administration — as special counsel in the investigation after the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch, who was assigned to do an initial review of the case, recommended that a special counsel be appointed.
Biden responded to the scandal on Thursday by saying that he has “no regrets” over his actions and that getting questioned about the investigation “quite frankly bugs” him.
“We’re fully cooperating, looking forward to getting this resolved quickly,” Biden claimed. “I think you’re gonna find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do — that’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there, there.”