WASHINGTON • The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., on Wednesday without finding classified documents, the president’s attorney said. Agents did take some handwritten notes and other materials relating to Biden’s time as vice president for review.

The search, disclosed by Biden’s personal lawyer, was the latest discomfiting moment for a president who has sought to contrast his sensitivity to rule-following with that of his predecessor Donald Trump, who faces a criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents.

Wednesday’s search, the third for a Biden home or office, was an extraordinary development for a sitting president, and made clear that an investigation that had simmered quietly for weeks was continuing rather than fading away as Biden, who has said he was surprised by an earlier records discovery, presumably hoped.

The attorney, Bob Bauer, said FBI agents spent three and a half hours searching the home and that, “No documents with classified markings were found.”

Biden’s attorneys revealed last month that they had undertaken their search of the home without turning up classified materials. The fact the FBI did its own search reflected the Justice Department’s determination to retrieve any and all possible classified items rather than rely on assurances that such documents had been located.

In a statement disclosing the search, Bauer sought to portray the president and his team as fully transparent and cooperative.

He described the search as “planned” and “a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate.”

He did not mention Trump by name, but the statement seemed aimed at juxtaposing the Biden investigation with the Trump case, where months of fruitless Justice Department efforts to recover all the classified records taken to the former president’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, culminated in an August search warrant and the removal of nearly three dozen boxes of documents and other items.

Searches of Biden’s former office and Delaware homes, by contrast, have been done voluntarily and without a warrant.

The latest search follows the FBI’s 13-hour, top-to-bottom check of his Wilmington, Del., home, where agents located documents with classified markings from his time as a vice president and senator and also took possession of some of his handwritten notes.

President Joe Biden walks across the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday in Washington.

The Associated Press