Classified documents dating back to the Obama administration keep turning up in President Joe Biden’s personal workspaces, beginning with 10 documents found in November, days before the election, to six additional documents discovered at the President’s home in Delaware this week.

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether the classified documents—which are supposed to remain in secure locations tracked by the National Archives—were ever mishandled, and if any federal laws were violated. Details about how many total classified documents were discovered and their contents remain unclear.

The situation is eerily reminiscent of former President Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents first discovered at his Florida home in June. Biden condemned Trump’s actions and supported the special counsel investigation into the former president’s handling of the documents, which began just two weeks before the first batch of Biden’s classified documents were discovered.

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The timing of the discoveries also raises questions about why the investigations—which began one day after the midterm elections that the Democratic party was favored to lose—were kept quiet for so long. It wasn’t until last week when news investigations revealed the discoveries that the White House publicly acknowledged the case.

“People know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously,” Biden said at a briefing on Thursday, adding that he was “cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department’s review.”

Here’s the timeline of events:

November 2022

On November 2, Biden’s private attorneys unexpectedly discovered the first collection of about 10 classified documents from the Obama-Biden administration in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center office in Washington D.C—a think tank that Biden founded. Biden began working at the office occasionally in 2017 after his vice presidency ended.

Following statutory requirements, the documents were voluntarily turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). On November 4, NARA informed the Justice Department (DOJ) about the revelation. Midterm elections, where the Democratic party was favored to lose its Congressional majority, took place a few days later on November 8.

On November 9, the FBI began an inquiry into whether any laws were broken and if classified information was mishandled. Several days later on November 14, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned John Lausch, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to the case to determine if a special counsel was needed.

December 2022

The following month, Biden’s personal counsel found additional classified documents in the president’s private library attached to his garage during an inspection of his home in Wilmington, Delaware on December 20. The attorneys informed Lausch about the findings and handed the documents over the following day.

January 2023

A few days into the new year, Lausch filled Garland in on the investigation on January 5 and recommended that the DOJ appoint a special counsel, who would extensively investigate and potentially prosecute any wrongdoing.

On January 9, CBS News was the first to report on November’s discovery of classified documents, bringing the case to public attention. The White House then publicly confirmed the inquiry, saying that the administration was cooperating with the DOJ and NARA, but didn’t mention the additional classified documents found in December.

“The White House is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice regarding the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records, including a small number of documents with classified markings,” White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement.

On January 10 at a news conference from Mexico, Biden said that he was surprised to learn about the classified documents, explaining that his team helped him set up his personal office after his vice presidency ended. The White House asserted that it was an oversight and that Biden’s team acted immediately to hand over all classified documents upon their discovery.

During another inspection of Biden’s home on January 11, his personal counsel found one more classified document stored in a room adjacent to the garage. The lawyers informed the DOJ about the latest uncovering the next day, on January 12. These documents were in addition to the ones found there in December.

That afternoon, Garland announced the appointment of Robert Hur, a Trump-era U.S. attorney for the district of Maryland, as special counsel. “The extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter,” Garland said at the briefing, also mentioning the second batch of classified documents obtained in December.

Later that day, Biden’s team found an additional five classified documents at his home in Wilmington. The White House shared this discovery on January 14.

“The President directed his personal attorneys to be forthcoming and fully cooperative,” Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, said in a statement to the press on Saturday. “The President’s personal attorneys have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”

SAN FRANCISCO — With rain-soaked California expected to see more stormy weather over the weekend and into next week, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and other state and federal officials pleaded with residents Friday to stay alert to possibly more flooding and damage.

A series of storms has walloped the state since late December, leaving at least 19 people dead. On Friday, 6,000 people were under evacuation orders and another 20,000 households were without power, said Nancy Ward, the director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

Homes have flooded, levees breached and topped, and mudslides and hurricane-force winds have slammed parts of the state, including a tornado touchdown in Northern California, she said at a press briefing with Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who was in California to tour damage.

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“People will become complacent, but the ground is saturated. It is extremely, extremely dangerous,” Ward said. “And that water can continue to rise well after the storms have passed.”

The ongoing atmospheric river pattern brought showers to Northern California early Friday, and additional surges of moisture, which will be even stronger, are expected to again spread rain and snow elsewhere in the state over the coming days.

California, a state plagued by drought, has averaged more than 9 inches (23 centimeters) of rainfall over the past 18 days — a remarkable amount that has seen some locations meet their average annual rainfall already, said David Lawrence, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

A Saturday storm will bring widespread, powerful rainfall and heavy mountain snowfall — with wind gusts of up to 60 mph (97 kph) and the possibility of more trees falling and power outages, he said.

There have been at least 19 storm-related deaths, and half of those have involved motorists, with some of the deaths preventable if drivers had heeded road closure signs, said Sean Duryee, acting commissioner of the California Highway Patrol.

On Friday, Newsom visited the upscale community of Montecito in Santa Barbara County — which had been evacuated earlier in the week — on the fifth year anniversary of the mudslide that killed 23 people and destroyed more than 100 homes in the coastal enclave.

He thanked members of the California National Guard for clearing debris out of a catch basin that was constructed after the mudslide in order to divert rain. He also asked residents to exercise caution, and to heed warnings from public safety and law enforcement.

“I know how fatigued you all are,” Newsom said. “Just maintain a little more vigilance over the course of the next weekend.”

On Monday, President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration to support storm response and relief efforts in more than a dozen counties, but Newsom is still waiting on the White House to declare a major disaster declaration that would provide more resources.

Flood warnings were in effect for the Salinas River in an agricultural valley about 90 miles south of San Francisco. At least 20,000 acres (8,094 hectares) of farmland were at risk of flooding, the National Weather Service said.

In some parts of Northern California, cars were submerged, trees uprooted and roofs blown off homes.

In Southern California, authorities determined that a storm-related sewage spill into the Ventura River was much bigger than initially thought. Two Ojai Valley Sanitary District sewer lines damaged on Jan. 9 spilled more 14 million gallons, the Ventura County Environmental Health Division said Thursday. Warning signs have been placed along the river and beaches.

East of Los Angeles, Santa Anita Park proactively cancelled Saturday’s horse-racing event, an eight-race card, due to the rain forecast. Those races will be run as extras on three subsequent days, the track said.

Damage assessments, which have already started, are expected to surpass $1 billion.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia speaks after being sworn in for a second term during a ceremony in Atlanta, Ga., on January 12, 2023.

AP Photo/Brynn Anderson

• Gov. Brian Kemp in a new Politico interview critiqued former President Trump’s 2020 reelection bid.
• Kemp told the outlet that Trump “didn’t do a good enough job of telling people what he had done.”
• Kemp, who was inaugurated to a second term this week, has been floated as a potential 2024 presidential contender.

For nearly two years, former President Donald Trump criticized Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia for not helping him overturn now-President Joe Biden’s victory in the Southern swing state in the 2020 election.

In advance of the 2022 midterms, Trump even recruited former Sen. David Perdue to run against Kemp in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but the governor defeated him landslide — a reflection of his strength among Peach State conservatives.

And in the November general election, Kemp defeated his Democratic archrival Stacey Abrams by nearly eight points, winning by nearly 300,000 votes — a marked improvement over his roughly 55,000-vote victory against the former state lawmaker in the 2018 gubernatorial contest.

During last year’s campaign, Kemp — who was once an ally of Trump — largely avoided talking about the former president.

But in a recent Politico interview, Kemp critiqued Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, echoing earlier statements that the GOP could not simply fight against the Democratic Party but had to “be for something.”

“President Trump and his reelection didn’t do a good enough job of telling people what he had done and what he wanted to do in a second term,” the governor told the outlet.

Trump, who lost to Biden in the 2020 presidential election, has continued to allege that voter fraud was the culprit behind his ejection from the White House.

However, Kemp, who was inaugurated to a second term on Thursday, has sought to move the GOP forward — rebuffing the election grievances still spouted by many in the party.

The breadth of Kemp’s victory in Georgia — which was once firmly Republican but has taken on a tinge of purple in recent years — has led to him being mentioned as a potential GOP presidential contender in 2024.

When asked if he would serve out the entirety of his second term in the Governor’s Mansion, Kemp said he planned to do so — but used a less definitive choice of wording.

“My intention is to serve four more years,” the governor told the outlet.

Morale is described as “super low” in Goldman Sachs offices across the US and abroad.

David S. Holloway / Getty Images

• Sources close to Goldman Sachs told the New York Post more departures are likely on the horizon. 
• This year’s annual bonuses will be so “skimpy” employees will quit on their own, company insiders alleged.
• The company laid off 3,200 employees on Wednesday as part of an effort to cut costs.

After cutting more than 3,000 jobs on Wednesday, Goldman Sachs is planning to oust about 800 more employees in a less direct fashion, company insiders say.

Another round of employees is expected to quit in the coming weeks after Goldman Sachs issues annual bonuses, according to sources close to the company who spoke to the New York Post. The forthcoming bonuses are expected to be “so skimpy that disgusted recipients will pack up and leave,” the sources told the Post. 

“The expectation is people will quit the following week,” a source told the Post.

The move would encourage already dejected employees to leave the company without having to be fired by higher ups,  part of an existing Wall Street strategy to nudge out staffers previously referred to as “firing by process,” a term coined by media mogul Barry Diller.

One Goldman employee described morale in the office as “super low” and claimed their co-workers are “very depressed,” according to the New York Post report. The company’s recent layoffs are part of a cost-cutting effort that impacted 3,200 positions in New York, Dallas, Chicago, Salt Lake City, and London. 

Some workers were reportedly asked to attend business meetings during which they were fired and, in some cases, given only 30 minutes to leave, according to the New York Post. 

A Goldman Sachs spokesperson addressed the layoffs in a statement to Insider: “We know this is a difficult time for people leaving the firm. We’re grateful for all our people’s contributions, and we’re providing support to ease their transitions. Our focus now is to appropriately size the firm for the opportunities ahead of us in a challenging macroeconomic environment.”

 

 

Hometown Gas & Grill in Lebanon, Maine

Hometown Gas & Grill/Facebook

• Maine just sold its first winning Mega Millions ticket for a whopping $1.35 billion. 
• The ticket was sold at a gas station in the small town of Lebanon. 
• “It is best to live here if you are a retiree or looking for a place to get away from society,” a former resident said. 

A gas station in Lebanon, Maine, sold the winning $1.35 billion Mega Millions ticket on Friday, the first ever sold in the state and the fourth largest jackpot in US history. 

While the winner has yet to be identified, the small town of Lebanon  — on the border of Maine and New Hampshire and home to just over 6,400 residents, per the 2020 census — finds itself in an unfamiliar spotlight.

According to Niche, a website that offers research on prospective places to live and work, Lebanon is largely a mix of suburban and rural areas, and one former resident said it’s best known as a “place for woodsy introverts.” 

“There is not much around, but it is a quiet little town in Maine,” they wrote on the site. “It is best to live here if you are a retiree or looking for a place to get away from society”

Beyond the town itself, Lebanon’s local Hometown Gas & Grill, where the winning ticket was sold, is having a moment.

“Lebanon is in the news (for good reasons),” the company wrote on its Facebook page on Saturday. “Thanks for all the support from our customers. We are anxiously waiting to see if it is someone we see regularly here in town that won a whopping 1.3 BIILLLLION DOLLAS.”

The winning numbers were 30, 43, 45, 46 and 61, and the gold Mega Ball was 14.  

Hometown Gas & Grill owner Fred Cotreau told Fox Business he at first didn’t believe his company really had sold the ticket when he received a call from the Maine State Lottery on Saturday. 

“6 o’clock this morning [there was an] Augusta, Maine, ID on my cellphone,” he said. “At the beginning, I thought it was a scam. I thought the next thing he was going to ask me for a gift card.” 

An employee of the gas station similarly expressed disbelief to Fox Business: “I was kind of like, ‘Is that true?'” 

Hometown Gas & Grill in Lebanon, Maine.

Hometown Gas & Grill/Facebook

The jackpot reached $1.35 billion after swelling in size since the last win in November 2022, when a Californian scored the $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot.

The winnings from the Friday Mega Millions ticket are more than half of the collective $2.2 billion total prizes paid out in the 40-year history of the Maine Lottery. Prior to now, the winnings in the state have ranged from 50 cents to $9.1 million, according to the Maine Lottery’s website. 

A total of 1,250 retailers sell lottery products in the state, and each business receives commissions and bonuses, per the Maine Lottery. 

Cotreau told Fox Business he’s not sure if his company will receive any money for selling the winning ticket, but regardless he said he “would just like the winner to be generous with the cashier that sold them the ticket.”

(NewsNation) — Damar Hamlin visited with teammates at the Bills facility on Saturday for the first time since being discharged from a Buffalo hospital, according to multiple reports.

The visit comes about two weeks after the Bills safety went into cardiac arrest and needed to be resuscitated on the field during a game in Cincinnati.

Bills linebacker Matt Milano posted a photo on his Instagram account of a smiling Hamlin shaking hands with someone.

A person with direct knowledge of Hamlin’s schedule confirmed to The Associated Press the player’s visit. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because Hamlin has kept his schedule and recovery private.

Hamlin was cleared to go home Wednesday after undergoing final tests at Buffalo General Medical Center.

His trip to meet with teammates comes a day before the Bills (13-3) host their division rival Miami Dolphins (9-8) in a wild-card playoff game, heightening the possibility he might be healthy enough to attend the game.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Storm-battered California got more wind, rain and snow on Saturday, raising flooding concerns, causing power outages and making travel dangerous.

Bands of rain with gusty winds started in the north and spread south, with more storms expected to follow into early next week, the National Weather Service said.

More than 68,000 utility customers were without electricity by late morning, according to poweroutage.us.

Flood warnings were issued for the region north of San Francisco Bay, including Marin, Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties.

To the south, warnings were posted for parts of counties including San Mateo and Santa Cruz, where the tiny community of Felton Grove along the San Lorenzo River was ordered evacuated.

The swollen Salinas River swamped farmland in Monterey County, and to the east, flood warnings were in effect for the San Joaquin Valley community of Merced.

Slick roads, snow and whiteout conditions plagued highways through the Sierra Nevada.

The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab tweeted Saturday morning that it received 21.3 inches of snow in 24 hours and that its snowpack of about 10 feet was expected to grow several more feet by Monday.

A backcountry avalanche warning was issued for the central Sierra, including the greater Lake Tahoe area.

A series of atmospheric rivers has dumped rain and snow on California since late December, cutting power to thousands, swamping roads, unleashing debris flows, and triggering landslides.

At least 19 storm-related deaths have occurred, and a 5-year-old boy remained missing after being swept out of his mother’s car by flood waters in San Luis Obispo County.

Half of the deaths have involved motorists, and some could have been prevented if drivers had heeded road closure signs, said Sean Duryee, acting commissioner of the California Highway Patrol, during a briefing by state and federal officials on Friday.

In Santa Barbara County, where a massive debris flow through the community of Montecito killed 23 people on Jan. 9, 2018, residents were told that new evacuations were not expected but that they should be prepared.

Montecito and adjacent areas were most recently ordered evacuated last Monday, the fifth anniversary of what is locally remembered as the “1/9 Debris Flow.” But the community perched on foothills of coastal mountains escaped serious harm.

In a visit to Montecito on Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked residents to exercise caution, and to heed warnings from public safety officials.

“I know how fatigued you all are,” Newsom said. “Just maintain a little more vigilance over the course of the next weekend.”

Dry days are in next week’s forecast for California starting on Tuesday.

“Question will then become do we stay dry through the end of month?” the San Francisco Bay Area weather office wrote.

Tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in three major cities on Saturday against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reform plans, with organisers accusing him of undermining democratic rule weeks after his reelection.

Bestriding a religious-nationalist coalition with a solid parliamentary majority, Netanyahu, now in his sixth term, wants to rein in the Supreme Court in what he has described as a restoration of the balance of the three branches of government.

Critics say the proposed reforms would cripple judicial independence, foster corruption, set back minority rights and deprive Israel’s courts system of credibility that helps fend off war-crimes allegations abroad. Among those opposed are the Supreme Court chief justice and the country’s attorney-general.

After President Isaac Herzog appealed to polarised politicians to “lower the temperatures” of the debates, organisers of the demonstrations – held under chilly winter rain – sought to strike a note of national unity.

“Take an Israeli flag in one hand, an umbrella in the other, and come out to protect democracy and law in the State of Israel,” said centrist ex-defence minister Benny Gantz, who attended the Tel Aviv rally but, like other opposition figures, was not due to address it.

“We Are Preserving Our Shared Home,” read one demonstrator’s placard. Netanyahu was guilty of a “legal putsch”, said another.

Israeli media put the number in attendance at some 80,000, with thousands more at protests in Jerusalem and Haifa.

Social media footage showed a small number of Palestinian flags on display, in defiance of Netanyahu’s far-right allies. One of these, National Security Ministry Itamar Ben-Gvir, told Kan TV he wanted such flags removed but was awaiting the opinion of the attorney-general before ordering any crackdown by police.

The 73-year-old Netanyahu on Friday signalled flexibility on the reform plan, saying it would be implemented “with careful consideration while hearing all of the positions”.

Polls have diverged on public views of the reforms. Channel 13 TV last week found 53% of Israelis were opposed to changing the court appointments’ structure while 35% were in support. But Channel 14 TV on Thursday found 61% in favour and 35% opposed.

Critics of the Supreme Court say it is overreaching and unrepresentative of the electorate. Its proponents call the court a means of bringing equilibrium to a fractious society.

“Tens of thousands of people were at tonight’s demonstrations. In the election held here two and a half months ago, millions turned out,” tweeted Miki Zohar a senior lawmaker in Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party.

“We promised the people change, we promised governance, we promised reforms – and we will make good on that.”

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This week’s revelations that U.S. President Joe Biden stored classified documents in his Delaware home from his time as vice president has caused a political headache for him and the Democratic party, just as he approaches a difficult re-election bid.

Biden began 2023 buoyed by unexpectedly strong midterm election results for Democrats. Since then inflation has fallen, and the opposition Republican Party appeared in such public disarray that it took days to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives.

The president, 80, was poised to ride that wave into an announcement that he will make another run for the White House, perhaps as soon as next month, after the State of the Union address on Feb. 7, sources told Reuters.

But Attorney General Merrick Garland’s naming of a special counsel on Thursday to probe the Biden administration’s document handling has neutralized Democrats’ ability to target former President Donald Trump, Republicans’ top 2024 candidate so far, over classified documents.

“It basically … is a huge gift to Trump,” said David Axelrod, a former political adviser to President Barack Obama. Axelrod said the latest developments were an “embarrassment” because Biden criticized his predecessor after the FBI found classified government documents during a court-ordered search of Trump’s Florida resort.

“He’s been on a huge run here. And he had a lot of momentum going, and this is a bump in the road,” Axelrod said.

After Biden aides found classified documents at his residence in Delaware, including some in his garage, and at a Washington think tank he was associated with, Biden’s counsel said on Saturday that he had found five additional pages with classified markings at the president’s home.

The White House has promised to cooperate with the Department of Justice investigation and says the documents were inadvertently misplaced.

It has declined to elaborate, citing the Justice Department probe.

In September Biden called Trump’s handling of classified documents “totally irresponsible.” The former president, responding to the latest developments on his Truth Social platform, questioned when Biden’s homes would be searched. Trump announced his own re-election bid last year.

Biden has pushed infrastructure and climate change legislation through Congress and led democratic nations’ united response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But he faces lackluster approval ratings and concerns about his age as he looks to 2024.

“This is a distraction for the White House right when they were starting to gain some momentum,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former spokesman for Republican President George W. Bush.

“It makes Biden look like a giant hypocrite,” Conant said. “Clearly Trump’s handling of classified materials was a lingering problem that Republicans had not had a good answer for until this week.”

While legal experts highlighted differences between the two cases – Trump refused to return documents, and about 100 marked classified were found at his home – a Democratic communications adviser, who declined to be named, said the issue would still pose questions for voters about Biden’s competence.

Axelrod said: “My guess is when this thing shakes out that it’s going to be less than it appears today, but right now it’s a huge pain.”