President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents erupted into a political crisis with potential legal repercussions on Thursday after the attorney general appointed a special counsel to investigate the incident.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents erupted into a political crisis with potential legal repercussions on Thursday after the attorney general appointed a special counsel to investigate the incident.
Attorney General Merrick Garland named former US attorney for Maryland Robert Hur, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, to lead the probe after the White House confirmed that a second set of classified materials was uncovered inside a garage storage area at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.
“This appointment underscores for the public the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law,” Garland said at a news conference.
Hur will explore whether any person or entity violated the law and will receive all the resources he needs to conduct the investigation, Garland said.
The naming of a special counsel is a blow for Biden and the White House, which had sought to move quickly past the episode. Garland’s move also intensified questions about why the White House waited until after news reports on the discovery of the documents to disclose the incident.
Biden has said he was “surprised” that classified material was found at an office he used after his vice presidency, and he suggested Thursday that documents found in his garage were secure because they shared space with his classic Corvette. He did not explain why the files were at his home.
“By the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage, so it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street,” Biden told reporters at the White House after he was asked about the latest discovery.
Biden’s glib remark, which came before Garland’s announcement, risked suggesting that the White House — which has refused to answer many questions about the documents — regards the incident as inconsequential.
A special counsel is already investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents following an FBI search of his Palm Beach, Florida, home in August. Biden has called Trump “totally irresponsible” for the hundreds of pages of classified materials he and his aides took from the White House after his presidency ended in 2021.
But with Biden’s own handling of classified material now under scrutiny, Democratic criticism of the former president and perhaps even the legal case against him risk being undermined. Many Republicans have complained of a double standard in the Justice Department’s handling of the Trump and Biden cases.
The first batch of classified records connected to Biden were found Nov. 2 as the president’s lawyers were cleaning out Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington. The White House has said the lawyers immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration, which took possession of the materials the following day.
Garland said the Archives’ inspector general notified the Department of Justice on Nov. 4.
The White House has not explained why lawyers were hired to clean out Biden’s old office.
Garland asked John Lausch, the Trump-appointed US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to review the discovery. Biden’s team meanwhile began searching other properties connected to him, including his Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, homes, for additional records.
Garland said Biden’s aides reported to Lausch on Dec. 20 that they’d discovered more classified records at his Wilmington home and that the FBI seized those files.
Lausch recommended to Garland that he appoint a special counsel for the Biden records on Jan. 5, the attorney general said Thursday.
Biden’s team finished its search of Biden’s properties Wednesday night, according to Richard Sauber, special counsel for the White House. Garland said they reported Thursday finding one additional document at Biden’s Wilmington home. The White House said the document was found among stored materials in an adjacent room.
Though Republicans have sought to draw an equivalence between the Biden and Trump cases, their are still vast differences in both the magnitude of the classified material in their possession and their handling of the documents.
Read More: Biden’s Classified-Document Headache Worsens With Second Batch
While neither the Justice Department nor the White House has enumerated the records found at Biden’s office and home, the White House has described both batches as “small.” CBS News reported that about 10 classified documents were found at Biden’s office.
The National Archives had not sought the return of Biden’s records, according to the White House.
Trump, on the contrary, had hundreds of pages of classified material at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. After the National Archives asked for its return, Trump voluntarily sent the agency only some of the materials. The FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago resort based on suspicion he had withheld many of the documents and found them stashed in his office and a storage room near parts of the property accessible to members of Trump’s club.
There is no indication that Biden or his aides sought to keep any of the material found at his office or his home or tried to mislead the Archives and Justice Department, as Trump’s associates may have done.
Biden said Thursday that he and his team are “cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department’s review” of the matter. “As I said earlier this week, people know I take classified documents and classified material seriously,” he added.
After Garland announced Hur’s appointment, Sauber said in a statement that the White House was “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”
House Republicans, who have largely defended Trump, have said they will investigate whether Biden improperly kept the documents found at his office and home and whether intelligence sources and methods were compromised as a result.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday that Congress should probe Biden’s handling of classified documents, arguing that a double standard had been applied to the Trump and Biden matters.
“This is what makes America not trust their government,” McCarthy said at a press conference.
In his comments Thursday, Biden said he was limited in what he could say about the matter. “I’m going to get a chance to speak on all of this, God willing, soon,” he said.
–With assistance from Josh Wingrove, Jennifer Jacobs and Billy House.
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