US Justice Department names special counsel to investigate Biden documents

The US Justice Department names special counsel for President Joe Biden's documents probe after a second set of classified documents was found at his private residence.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday named independent prosecutor Robert Hur to investigate Biden's mishandling of classified documents.

Garland said that the “extraordinary circumstances” surrounding the discovery of the documents meant he had to appoint a special counsel.

Earlier in the day, Biden admitted to reporters that aides discovered the documents at a space he had used after leaving office as vice president.

The classified documents were "inadvertently misplaced," a White House lawyer said Thursday, insisting the US president would "cooperate" with the special counsel appointed to investigate the matter.

"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," Richard Sauber, senior advisor to the White House Counsel's Office, said in a statement. 

The documents were uncovered at a storage space in the garage of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he often spends weekends, his lawyer said.

Garland said Hur, who is a private attorney and former government prosecutor who worked on counterterrorism and corporate fraud cases, would be given the title of the special counsel and empowered to examine whether the caches found at Biden's previous offices violated any US laws.

"As I have said before, I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity," Garland said. "But under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter."

"This appointment underscores for the public the department's commitment to both independence and accountability and particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts, and the law," Garland added.

Garland's announcement came hours after the White House acknowledged the second batch of papers in a statement that did not address their contents, supercharging a growing scandal over a first batch of documents found at a Washington think tank where Biden had an office.

Biden aides find second batch of classified documents at new location, reports say

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.

Sources familiar with the matter said the second batch of documents contained classified information. They came to light as Biden's aides conducted an extensive search of locations where he worked after leaving the Obama administration.

Biden's aides were responding to the November discovery of classified documents at the Washington, DC, office of the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Biden Center, which Biden used after his time as vice president.

The original November discovery was immediately reported to the National Archives and Records Administration, according to White House officials, sparking a DOJ inquiry that became public this week.

It is unclear whether the search by Biden aides to check for other potentially classified government documents has been completed yet.

The disclosures have prompted comparisons to the special counsel investigation of former president Donald Trump's hoarding of hundreds of classified government records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in south Florida and his alleged obstruction of government efforts to get them back.

The newly installed Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called for a congressional investigation into the Democratic president's mishandling of classified documents.

"I think Congress has to investigate this," McCarthy told reporters at his first news conference. "Here's an individual that's been in office for more than 40 years. Here's an individual that sat on '60 minutes,' that was so concerned about President Trump's documents, locked in behind, and now we find... a vice president keeping it for years out in the open in different locations."

Trump had earlier demanded on his Truth Social platform: "When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?"

Legal analysts have pointed to a major difference between the cases however, particularly over the size of the huge hoard of documents Trump had stored at his residence after leaving the White House in 2021.

The FBI carted away some 11,000 papers after serving a search warrant in August, and Trump could face obstruction of justice charges after spending months resisting government efforts to recover his trove and his failure to comply with a subpoena demanding their return.

The White House, in contrast, says it has been "fully cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice" since the Biden discovery.

After the first batch of Biden documents was discovered at his former office at the Penn Biden Center think tank last November, lawyers turned them over to the National Archives, which handles all such materials, the White House counsel's office said.

Lawyers for Biden then scoured possible locations for any other stray documents. Nevertheless, serious questions remain about when the second batch of documents was unearthed, who took both sets from the White House and if they have been accessed since Biden left the vice presidency in 2017.

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