UPDATED 12:24 P.M.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday announced the appointment of a special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of sensitive government documents – an inquiry that could cast a shadow over the Democrat’s expected run for re-election in 2024.
The top U.S. law enforcement official made the announcement hours after a White House lawyer on Thursday disclosed that Biden’s legal team had found a second set of classified papers from his time as vice president at a storage space at his Delaware home. The White House on Monday disclosed that classified documents from his vice presidential days were discovered in November at a think tank in Washington.
Garland said Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney in Maryland, would serve as special counsel.
Special counsels are sometimes appointed to investigate politically sensitive cases and they carry out their responsibilities with a degree of independence from the Justice Department leadership, including Garland, who was appointed by Biden. Special counsels sometimes, but not always, pursue criminal charges.
Garland in November named a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee Justice Department investigations related to Donald Trump including the Republican former president’s handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump, defeated by Biden in 2020, in November announced a 2024 run for the presidency.
A special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, in 2019 during Trump’s presidency documented contacts between the businessman-turned-politician’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, but found insufficient evidence to bring a charge of criminal conspiracy. Mueller did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice in trying to impede the Russia investigation, but then-Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, subsequently cleared him.
An independent counsel, a post similar to that of a special counsel, served during Bill Clinton’s presidency investigating the 1990s Whitewater political scandal and the Democratic president’s sexual relationship with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. That inquiry led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives, though he was acquitted by the Senate.
Biden, 80, is expected to formally launch a re-election campaign in coming months. The disclosures about the documents already have caused him political worries.
The president told reporters on Thursday that he will get a chance to speak on “all of this soon,” before reading from a prepared statement that echoed the information the White House put out moments earlier.
“As I said earlier this week, people know I take classified documents, classified material seriously. I also said we’re cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department’s review,” Biden said.
Biden said his legal team found a small number of documents with classified markings in storage areas and file cabinets in his personal library at his Wilmington home. The library is attached to his garage, which Biden said is locked.
Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement on Monday that classified materials were identified in a locked closet by personal attorneys for Biden on Nov. 2 when they were packing files at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a University of Pennsylvania think tank.
Officials said Biden’s attorneys discovered fewer than a dozen classified records inside the office and informed the U.S. National Archives, the agency responsible for the preservation of government records, turned over the materials and cooperated with the Archives and the Justice Department. Biden said he was “surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office” and did not know their contents.
In Trump’s case, FBI agents carried out a court-approved search last August at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. About 100 documents marked as classified were among thousands of records seized during the search. Biden in September called his predecessor’s handling of classified documents “totally irresponsible.”
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Will Dunham and Howard Goller)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Aides to U.S. President Joe Biden have discovered at least one more batch of classified documents in a location separate from a think tank office he used after serving as vice president, news outlets reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources.
Biden aides have been searching for additional classified materials that might be in other locations since a set of classified documents was found in November at the Washington-based think tank, according to a report in NBC News, which first broke the news, and CNN.
The NBC News report said the classification level, number and precise location of the additional documents was not immediately clear. It also said it was not clear when the additional documents were discovered and whether the search for any other classified materials Biden may have from his time as vice president is complete.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Senator Mark Warner, the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic chairman, has asked for a briefing on the first Biden document discovery, he said Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Senator Marco Rubio, the committee’s Republican vice chair, said Rubio and Warner had written to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, asking for access to the classified documents.
The two senators also requested a damage assessment by the intelligence community and a briefing on the retention of classified documents by both Biden, a Democrat, and Republican former President Donald Trump.
The request echoed a similar one sent to Haines on Tuesday by Republican Representative Mike Turner of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The reports come two days after a White House lawyer said classified documents from Biden’s vice presidential days had been discovered in November by the president’s personal attorneys at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement think tank.
Biden’s attorneys discovered fewer than a dozen classified records inside the office at center, and informed the U.S. National Archives of their discovery, turned over the materials, and said they were cooperating with the Archives and the Justice Department. The president said on Tuesday he and his team were cooperating fully with a review into what happened.
The Justice Department is separately probing Trump’s handling of highly sensitive classified documents that he retained at his Florida resort after leaving the White House in January 2021.
Trump kept thousands of government records, a few hundred of which were marked as classified, inside his personal residence in Florida for over a year after departing the White House, and did not return them immediately or willingly despite numerous requests by the National Archives.
When he finally handed over 15 boxes of records in January 2022, the Archives discovered more than 100 were marked as classified. It referred the matter to the Justice Department in the spring.
FBI agents carried out a court-approved search on Aug. 8 of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. About 100 documents marked as classified were among thousands of records seized.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Patricia Zengerle and Steve Holland in Washington; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Heather Timmons and Jonathan Oatis)
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