US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday he had appointed a special counsel to handle the investigation of President Joe Biden’s ‘mishandling’ of classified documents after earlier that morning Biden’s personal counsel informed the US Justice Department of a third classified document discovery.
In the United States, a special counsel is a lawyer appointed to handle an investigation – and any prosecutions that might result from it – if the usual authorities are believed to have a conflict of interest in the case.
Garland appointed as special counsel the former US attorney Robert Hur – who is also former deputy AG and a private practice lawyer with a history of prosecuting white-collar crime – to review the storage of confidential documents discovered in spaces President Biden used during the years preceding his return to the White House.
Garland stressed during a news conference at the DoJ that the emerging extraordinary circumstances required the appointment of a special counsel for this matter, underscoring at the same time the DoJ’s commitment to independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions that are indisputably guided by only the facts and the law.
Garland had previously assigned John Lausch, the US attorney from Chicago, to look into the documents but the situation worsened by the discovery of the third batch made him change his mind.
The latest batch of additional documents bearing classified markings in Biden’s possession came from Biden’s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware, after his lawyers discovered them in a storage space in the garage with one other record found in an adjacent room.
The Obama-Biden administration records were found during a search completed Wednesday night of Biden’s residences in both Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Del., Special Counsel to President Richard Sauber said in a statement.
President Biden snapped at the journalist when asked about the latest discovery, stressing that the documents were in a locked garage and it’s not like they were sitting out in the street.
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