Newsman: Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed a special counsel to investigate the presence of documents with classified markings found at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at an office in Washington. President Biden’s lawyer have found additional classified documents at his Wilmington, Del., residence, according to his counsel Richard Sauber, who said “all but one” of the new documents were found in storage in Biden’s garage, and one document was in stored materials in “an adjacent room.”
The special counsel will investigate how classified documents came to be located at President Biden’s Delaware residence and think tank office in Washington he used for about three years.
Attorney General Garland named former Justice Department official Robert Hur to conduct the high-profile inquiry after the White House confirmed that Biden’s private attorneys found “a small number” of materials with classified markings both in storage in Biden’s Wilmington, Del., garage and in an adjacent room as well as in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. The attorneys said in both cases they turned over the Obama-Biden administration-era records to the National Archives.
The Justice Department said Hur is assigned to probe “possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records.”
At an event Thursday morning after the statement came out, Biden acknowledged the discovery, telling reporters: “I’m going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon.”
Asked by a reporter why he would leave documents next to a vintage Corvette that Biden is known to have – Biden said: “By the way my Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK?” – implying that the documents were secure.
Hur released a statement promising to handle the probe “with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment.” He said, “I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”
Robert Hur, the former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Maryland, will lead the investigation, taking over from the top Justice Department prosecutor in Chicago, John Lausch, who was earlier assigned by the department to investigate the matter and who recommended to Garland last week that a special counsel be appointed. Hur is to begin his work soon.
“The extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter,” Garland said, adding that Hur is authorized to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law
Biden’s counsel Richard Sauber said the president will cooperate fully with the special counsel.
“We are 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,” Sauber said in a statement.
Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the Justice Department of the new discovery, Sauber said. He added that they were cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice “in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in possession of the Archives.”
Biden owns a 1967 Corvette, which was a wedding gift from his father, who ran a car dealership. He keeps it in a garage — though it’s not clear it’s the same garage where the documents were found.
The discovery comes after recent news that some classified documents were found in November at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank office in Washington, D.C., that Biden used for about three years.
The news fueled calls by House Republicans to conduct their own probes into the matter.
“Following the discovery of government documents at the Penn Biden Center in November 2022, and coordinating closely with the Department of Justice, the President’s lawyers have searched the President’s Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, residences — the other locations where files from his Vice-Presidential office might have been shipped in the course of the 2017 transition. The lawyers completed that review last night,” Sauber’s statement said.
During that review, the lawyers discovered among personal and political papers “a small number” of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings, he said.
Earlier this week, Biden said he was “surprised” to learn documents had been found at the think tank office, which he used from mid-2017 until the beginning of his 2020 campaign. Those documents were found in a box in a locked closet and were turned over to the National Archives as soon as they were discovered by his personal attorneys.
The new discovery has also fueled calls from the Republican-led House to initiate their own probe into the findings.
“Not once but now we’re finding in two different locations, classified information just out there in the open,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters on Thursday morning. He later added, “I think Congress needs to investigate this.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has already said his panel would dig into classified document concerns, and said he expects to hold related hearings.
Before Garland’s announcement, Comer raised concerns about a special counsel appointment. He said it could impede his panel’s probe into the matter, and argued his panel would be “a lot more effective and quicker” to investigate.
“I don’t see how they cannot appoint a special counsel with respect to Biden,” Comer told reporters before the Garland plans were shared. “Two things: I don’t have confidence in who Merrick Garland would appoint. And second, when that special counsel is appointed, it limits our ability to do some of the oversight investigations that we want to do with respect to this.”
The move marks the second time the Justice Department has handed a politically sensitive probe to a quasi-independent lawyer in as many months. Last November, former war crimes prosecutor Jack Smith took control of the investigation into mishandling of government secrets and obstruction involving scores of documents the FBI seized at former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Smith will also lead the probe of certain “key aspects” of the Jan. 6 insurrection, including portions that could reach into Trump’s inner circle.
Trump demanded Thursday that the special counsel investigation of his case be ended.
Biden told reporters at a news conference in Mexico this week that he wasn’t sure what was in the materials found at the Penn Biden Center. “People know I take classified documents and classified information seriously,” Biden said.
Garland told reporters that Trump’s 2024 presidential bid and Biden’s expected decision to seek reelection helped convince him to call in an outsider.
Justice Department officials said the appointment of a special counsel in the Biden matter was likewise required under federal regulations. Garland said the appointment “underscores” DOJ’s committment to accountability in “particularly sensitive matters.”
