More classified documents found at Biden home

Five additional pages of classified material have been found at Joe Biden's family home in Delaware, the White House said in a new twist in a politically sensitive affair for the president.

The new findings on Saturday was the latest in a series of revelations about the apparently improper storage of papers dating from Biden's time as Barack Obama's vice president.

Biden has said he had no intention of keeping any classified documents.

White House lawyer Richard Sauber said the latest papers were found after he visited the home on Thursday to oversee the transfer to the Justice Department of a first batch of documents found a day earlier in a room next to the home's garage.

Biden's personal lawyers searching the garage at the home in Wilmington, Delaware — where the 80-year-old president often spends weekends — had found a document marked classified in the garage itself.

As these attorneys lacked the necessary security clearance to read it, they notified the Justice Department, Sauber said in a statement.

A 1978 law obliges US presidents and vice presidents to hand over their emails, letters and other official documents to the National Archives.

Sauber said he does have the necessary security clearance, so he then went to the Delaware house to check out the situation for himself. That is when he found the other five pages, he said.

He said all documents were "immediately and voluntarily" handed to the Justice Department.

READ MORE: US appoints counsel to investigate Biden's handling of secret papers

Republican criticism

On Saturday, James Comer, Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, described the matter as alarming and said the National Archives, Justice Department and White House had not been transparent.

Others papers had been found on November 2 at Biden's former office at a Washington think tank, where he had offices after leaving the Obama White House.

The president's attorneys had also found "a small number of documents," potentially confidential, on December 20 in the Wilmington garage, and alerted the Justice Department.

Amid rising furor over the discoveries in Washington, US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday named Robert Hur as an independent prosecutor to investigate Biden's handling of classified documents.

The issue is an unwelcome distraction for Biden as he prepares to announce whether he will seek a second term.

Republicans have sought to compare the investigation to the ongoing probe into how former president Donald Trump handled classified documents after his presidency.

The White House says the two cases are different because Biden's team has cooperated with authorities in their probe and had turned over those documents.

In contrast, Sauber emphasised that Biden had returned documents "immediately and voluntarily" when they turned up.

"I take classified documents and classified material seriously. We're cooperating fully (and) completely with the Justice Department's review," Biden told reporters on Thursday.

"As part of that process, my lawyers reviewed other places where documents from my time as vice president were stored, and they finished the review last night."

The first cache of Biden documents was discovered in November, a week before last year's midterm elections, but only acknowledged by the White House on Monday, prompting accusations from Republicans that it was kept secret for political reasons.

READ MORE: Classified docs from Biden's VP period found at Washington think tank