NEW YORK (AP) – Virtually everything went right for President Joe Biden as the year unfolded.
His approval rating soared. Inflation is slowing. And while Democrats are uniting behind their re-election campaign, Republicans are at war with themselves after a disappointing midterm season.
But on Thursday, Biden’s political views entered uncertain territory after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the Democratic president’s handling of classified documents.
Democrats have publicly and privately acknowledged that the surprising development is at best an unwelcome distraction at an inopportune time that has made the case for Donald Trump. The former Republican president is facing his own special counsel and is under federal criminal investigation over his handling of classified documents and other potential violations.
There is a major difference between the two cases. Most importantly, there is no suggestion that Biden deliberately tried to prevent documents found in his home or office from being turned over or that he knew they existed. Trump, who is under investigation for allegedly obstructing investigators, also has more classified documents.
But Thursday’s appointment of a special counsel continues to cast legal uncertainty over the sitting president and could reignite debate among Democrats about the wisdom of him seeking a second term.
“No one is going to say this is beneficial,” said veteran Democratic strategist James Carville. “It’s pretty clear that’s not the case.”
As Democrats retreat into a defensive posture, Trump’s Republican rival in 2024 acknowledges that the contours of the upcoming race have changed.
Trump “is the luckiest man in American politics,” said John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser and is considering a Republican White House bid. “This should be disqualifying for both sides.”
Thus began a busy election season in which the current and former presidents of the United States are being investigated by special counsel as they prepare for a potential rematch in 2024. Many voters in both parties have asked for a new generation of leadership to emerge in the new presidential contest. Such calls are getting louder now.
“In many areas of politics, the 2024 campaign called Biden could be vulnerable,” said Norman Soloman, a progressive Democrat who heads the Don’t Run Joe campaign, which has run television ads against Biden in key states. “Democrats and the country as a whole will be better off this year and next if he is not president.”
The 80-year-old president has said he plans to seek a second term, but he has yet to make a final decision. His allies believe he will make an official announcement after the end of March.
So far, there are at least no high-profile Democrats willing to challenge Biden in the presidential primary contest. But privately, some Democratic officials believe the new federal investigation could help motivate potential insurgents.
One of Biden’s potential challengers, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, recently told The Associated Press that he will make a decision on his 2024 goals “at the appropriate time.” Nina Turner, who is chairing Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, said after Thursday’s announcement that she hopes the “progressives of the freedom struggle” will be the main challenge against Biden in 2024.
“The American people should have made a better choice — Republicans and Democrats,” Turner said, calling the administration’s decision to review Biden’s handling of classified documents the same as investigating Trump. “We don’t need these people shoving it down our throats.”
Garland’s appointment as special counsel follows Biden’s admission Thursday morning that classified documents from his time as President Barack Obama’s vice president were found in the garage of his Delaware home and his personal library, in addition to documents that had been found in a locked cabinet. in the office he used after leaving the White House.
Garland said Biden’s lawyers notified the Justice Department on Thursday morning of the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s home, after FBI agents first retrieved other documents from his garage in December.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Biden said he was cooperating “fully and fully with the Justice Department’s review.”
“People know I take classified documents and classified material very seriously,” Biden said. He added: “My Corvette is in a locked garage.”
To be clear, there are differences between the cases, including the volume of documents uncovered and the gravity of the grand jury investigation into the matter at Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago home.
About 300 records with classified markings were found from Mar-a-Lago, a private club that hosts constant events. The search of Trump’s property is the culmination of months of back-and-forth between the administration and Trump’s representatives, who have repeatedly rebuffed efforts to return the missing documents. And the Justice Department said classified documents were “likely hidden and removed” from storage rooms as part of what it charged was an effort to obstruct the federal investigation.
A search warrant showed the FBI was investigating crimes including the intentional retention of national defense information and efforts to obstruct a federal probe.
But Trump has seized on the news, seeking to use it to undermine the investigation into his conduct.
“It’s over,” Trump said in an interview with conservative talk radio host Mark Levin on Thursday evening. “When all these documents started coming out and Biden had it, it changed the color of his skin and the intensity that he showed me because, you know, what he did – I’m not saying it’s worse, I’m not wrong. – what he did was not good. What he did that’s bad.”
Some Democrats are hopeful, but not certain, that voters will be able to distinguish between Biden’s cooperative approach involving small documents that could be obtained by accident and what federal prosecutors describe as Trump’s deliberate obstruction of hundreds of government secrets.
“It’s all the difference in the world between having something you didn’t know you had and having something you knew you had and weren’t supposed to have,” Carville said. “What will be lost between the three countries? Probably so.”
Bolton, a fierce Trump critic, predicted that the significant legal differences between the two cases would be “lost in the fog.” Now, he finds it hard to believe that Trump could be sued for the Mar-a-Lago documents, regardless of the circumstances.
“I don’t see how the criminal case is moving forward at this point,” Bolton said. “I just think there’s a cloud in the prosecution.”
While the ground may be shifting, Trump’s legal challenges aren’t going away.
Two months ago, Garland appointed the former public corruption prosecutor of the Department of Justice Jack Smith to lead the investigation into the secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago as well as the main aspect of the separate investigation involving the rebellion and the attempt to cancel the January 6, 2021. election 2020.
Federal prosecutors are particularly focused on a scheme by Trump allies to raise fake voters in key battleground states won by Biden as a way to suppress votes. He issued subpoenas to several state Republican Party chairmen.
Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin described the latest development as “definitely inappropriate.”
“I think everybody wants this not to happen, including the president,” he said. “But it’s important to keep all of this in context: Everyone sees President Biden as a more responsible figure than Donald Trump. And that can’t be forgotten.”