Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday that he will appoint former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate classified documents recently found in President Joe Biden’s home and office since he became vice president.
“I am confident that Mr. Hur will carry out the responsibility in the process even-handed and urgent and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department,” said Garland in a press conference.
Republicans have seized on the discovery as a criminal investigation now looms over former President Donald Trump, who moved thousands of government records to his Mar-a-Lago home after becoming president. The former president slowly walked the Justice Department to regain control of the documents and fight the investigation.
When the president leaves office, all presidential records become the legal property of the National Archives, which is responsible for keeping them safe.
Garland was named special counsel on November 18 to oversee the Department of Justice’s review of Trump mishandling documents and his alleged role in the Capitol attack, acknowledging the sensitive politics involved in investigating former presidents and current presidential candidates. He chose Jack Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor who has remained mum to this day.
Lawyers for Biden have discovered two sets of documents from his time as vice president. They said they discovered the first cache — reportedly about 10 documents — on Nov. 2 while working to seal off Biden’s old private office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington.
The White House said it immediately notified the Justice Department, and Biden’s lawyers are looking for other places where classified information may have gone after he became vice president. He found a second group in a storage space in the president’s garage in Wilmington, Delaware. Attorneys completed the search this week, the White House said.
On Dec. 14, Garland assigned U.S. Attorney John Lausch to look into the matter and said he felt the appointment of a special counsel was necessary. Lausch came back with a recommendation last week.
Biden said Tuesday that he was “shocked” to hear about the documents in his former office and said he did not know what information they contained.
“People know I take classified documents, classified information very seriously,” Biden said.
Thursday morning, he was asked what he was “thinking” by keeping important notes next to his car.
“Anyway, my Corvette is in a locked garage, so it’s not like she’s sitting in the driveway,” Biden replied.
Richard Sauber, an attorney for Biden, confirmed some of his comments in a statement Thursday afternoon.
“As the President said, he took classified information and a lot of material, and we have said, we have cooperated from the moment we informed the Archives that a small number of documents were found, and we will continue to cooperate,” Sauber said.
“We are confident that a full review will show that these documents were inadvertently included, and that the President and his attorneys acted promptly upon discovering this error.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also confirmed to reporters Thursday afternoon that Biden “believes in the independence of the Justice Department” and “restores that independence.” Trump appears to be heavily meddling in the department’s affairs.
“We have been very careful here not to appear from the White House to influence their decisions on some issues. As I have said repeatedly … the Department of Justice is independent and we respect its independence,” said Jean-Pierre.
He declined to comment on the comparison between one of Trump’s secret documents and Biden’s apparent wrongdoing.
“We’re trying to do this by the book,” he told reporters.
In August, an FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida sent shock waves around Washington. The raid followed months of communications between Trump’s team and representatives of the federal government and yielded more than a dozen boxes containing documents marked classified.
The Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified information post-presidency was interrupted by Trump’s insistence that a “special master” be appointed to review documents seized from his property in Florida. The department was finally allowed to continue using it in the investigation in December.