Weeks before Biden's lawyers found classified documents in his garage, they told the Department of Justice that they had no reason to believe any more documents had yet to be accounted for, according to a new report in the New York Times. 

The report contradicts or at least calls into doubt Biden's claims of full transparency and cooperation with federal investigators. Democrats have seized on that talking point to differentiate the Biden document scandal from a similar scenario involving former President Trump.

Another Biden lie?

Biden's lawyers told the DOJ at first that they had "no reason" to believe more classified documents were floating around after they found the first set of files at the Penn Biden Center in November, the Times reported.

That turned out to be either a gross error or a brazen lie.

The New York Times refers to Biden's omission as a "mistake," but it's still unclear why Biden's lawyers went looking for classified papers in the first place -- or why, if they believed they had found everything at Biden's think tank, they kept looking in Biden's house.

Biden's lawyers gave no warning of their initial search at Biden's home, despite telling the DOJ they would be in touch if they had reason to believe more documents were out there. The Times credulously reports that Biden's team searched his home out of "due diligence" and not because of new information.

Collusion?

The Biden White House has been cagey about the controversy from the beginning. The public wasn't notified of Biden's mishandling of classified documents until this month, and even then, the second set of documents that was located in Biden's garage in December wasn't immediately disclosed.

While it appears Biden may have been deceiving investigators (and the public), the DOJ reportedly had an "understanding" to keep the controversy under wraps before it went public this month, and the DOJ initially trusted Biden's lawyers to search for documents themselves.

The DOJ finally stepped in Friday with a search of Biden's home that turned up even more records.

The feds are reportedly weighing searches of additional locations.

Double standard

Republicans have alleged Biden is getting kid-gloved treatment from the DOJ, which performed an unprecedented FBI raid at the home of President Trump to retrieve classified documents in August.

Attorney general Merrick Garland has insisted that Biden is being treated the same as any other person.

"The department has a set of norms and practices," Garland said Monday. "These mean, among other things, that we do not have different rules for Democrats or Republicans, different rules for the powerful or powerless, different rules for the rich or poor."

The Biden administration's claims of "transparency" are becoming less plausible by the day.