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‘Congress has to investigate’ – McCarthy on Biden classified documents

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2023

US 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 to run for re-election in 2024.

The top US 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 US 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.

Biden, 80, is expected to formally launch a re-election campaign in the 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.

Recently elected Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy said on Thursday that Congress should investigate revelations that President Joe Biden kept classified documents at his private residence.

McCarthy told reporters that the discoveries demonstrated the Biden administration’s hypocrisy with regard to similar revelations about former President Donald Trump.

“Another faux pas by the Biden administration, but treating law differently based upon your political beliefs,” McCarthy said.

“I think Congress has to investigate this,” he added.

A single document was found in a room adjacent to the garage in Wilmington and no documents were found in the Bidens’ Rehoboth Beach home, Biden’s attorney said in a statement. The administration is “fully cooperating” to ensure that the records are handled properly, Sauber said.

There are differences between the revelation that Biden’s legal team found classified documents in his properties and the ongoing Justice Department investigation into former President Donald Trump’s refusal to hand over classified documents taken from the White House.

Trump kept thousands of government records, a few hundred of which were marked as classified, inside his personal residence in Florida for more than 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 and a special counsel has been named to oversee the investigation.

Reuters