Special counsel to probe Biden’s improper storage of files

President Joe Biden’s own
administration named a special counsel to probe the improper
storage of classified documents at his home and a former office
on Thursday, an embarrassing echo of a wider-ranging inquiry
directed at his main political rival, Donald Trump.
The inquiry is a distraction for a Democratic president who
has criticized his Republican predecessor’s handling of
classified material, and could cast a shadow over Biden as the
two gear up for a possible 2024 election rematch.
Garland said Robert Hur, who served as the top federal
prosecutor in Maryland under Trump, will act as a
quasi-independent prosecutor to determine whether classified
records from Biden’s time as vice president had been improperly
stored at his residence in Delaware and a think tank in
Washington. Garland said Hur will examine “whether any person or
entity violated the law.”
The White House pledged to cooperate.
“We are confident that a thorough review will show that
these documents were inadvertently misplaced,” White House
lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement.
While Biden and Trump now face inquiries from special
prosecutors, who are typically appointed to politically
sensitive cases to ensure a degree of independence from Justice
Department leadership, that does not mean their cases are the
same.
Biden’s attorneys said they have found fewer than a dozen
classified documents and turned over the relevant papers after
finding them. Trump resisted doing so until an August FBI search
turned up about 100 classified documents, raising questions
about whether Trump or his staff obstructed the investigation.
“The facts cannot be more different. The only similarity is
there were classified documents that were taken out of the White
House to somewhere else, said Kel McClanahan, head of National
Security Counselors, a law firm.
The special counsel investigating Trump’s handling of
documents is also leading inquiries into the Republican’s
attempts to overturn his November 2020 election defeat to Biden.
PROTECTIONS
As a sitting president, Biden faces less legal risk than
Trump. He has broad latitude to declassify documents and will
likely be shielded from prosecution, as the Justice Department
has a long-standing policy of not bringing criminal charges
against the occupant of the Oval Office.
Trump, by contrast, lost those protections when he left
office.
Garland said he decided a special counsel was necessary in
the Biden case after an initial investigation conducted by John
Lausch, a Trump appointee who serves as the top federal
prosecutor in the Chicago region.
“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, in a statement, said he would conduct the investigation
impartially.
REPUBLICAN CRITICISM
Republicans said they would be in a better position than the
Justice Department to handle the investigation.
“When special counsels are appointed, it limits our ability
to do some of the oversight investigations that we want to do,”
said Representative James Comer, who will head the House
Oversight Committee.
Garland named a special counsel, Jack Smith, in November to
oversee investigations of Trump, shortly after Trump said he
would seek the Republican nomination to run again for president
in 2024.
About 100 documents marked as classified were among
thousands of records seized during an August search at Trump’s
Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Biden called Trump’s behavior
“totally irresponsible” in September.
Biden, 80, is expected to formally begin a re-election
campaign in the coming weeks.
“People know I take classified documents, classified
material seriously,” Biden told reporters on Thursday.
The White House said Biden does not know what is in the
documents.
Sauber, the White House lawyer, said Biden’s personal
attorneys found fewer than a dozen classified records in a
locked closet in November when they were packing files at an
office Biden formerly used at the Penn Biden Center for
Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a University of Pennsylvania
think tank.
White House officials say those lawyers gave the material to
the U.S. National Archives, the agency responsible for the
preservation of government records.
The White House revealed the discovery to the public on
Monday. Hours before Garland’s announcement, a White House
lawyer said a second set of classified papers from that time was
found at a storage space at his Delaware home.
Garland revealed on Thursday that the Delaware documents
were found on Dec. 20, meaning that the White House knew about
them and did not mention them when it made its initial Jan. 9
disclosure.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean Pierre told
reporters that the Justice Department’s review prevented the
administration from telling the public.
Trump during his presidency faced a special counsel, Robert
Mueller, who found insufficient evidence to conclude that
contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016
presidential race amounted to criminal conduct. Mueller did not
exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice but then-Attorney
General William Barr, a Trump appointee, subsequently cleared
him.
Democratic President Bill Clinton was likewise dogged by an
independent prosecutor, Ken Starr, who uncovered evidence of an
extramarital affair with a White House intern, which led to
Clinton’s impeachment.