JAKARTA - United States Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday announced the appointment of Robert Hur, the former Maryland Attorney General as a special attorney or special counsel, to investigate President Joe Biden's handling of sensitive government documents.
Attorney General Garland made the announcement hours after a White House attorney revealed Thursday that President Biden's legal team had found a second batch of classified documents while he was vice president in a vault at his Delaware home.
Earlier, the White House on Monday disclosed classified documents from its vice presidential days found in November at a think tank in Washington.
Attorney General Garland said Robert Hur would act as a quasi-independent attorney to determine whether secret records from Biden's vice presidency were improperly stored at his residence in Delaware and a think tank in Washington.
Garland further said that Hur would check "whether there is a person or entity breaking the law." Meanwhile, the White House vowed to cooperate.
"We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced," White House attorney Richard Sauber said in a statement.
While Presidents Biden and Trump now face investigations from special prosecutors, who are usually appointed to politically sensitive cases to ensure a degree of independence from Justice Department leadership, that doesn't mean their cases are the same.
Lawyers for Biden said they had found less than a dozen classified documents and turned over the relevant papers after finding them. Trump refused to do so until an August FBI search uncovered some 100 classified documents, raising questions about whether Trump or his staff obstructed the investigation.
"The facts are very different. The only thing in common is that there are classified documents that were taken from the White House to another place," said Kel McClanahan, head of the law firm National Security Counselors.
The special prosecutor investigating Trump's handling of documents is also leading an investigation into the Republican Party's efforts to overturn its November 2020 election loss to Biden.
As president, Biden faces less legal risk than Trump. He has wide latitude to declassify documents and will likely be protected from prosecution, as the Justice Department has a long-standing policy of not pursuing criminal charges against residents of the Oval Office of the White House.
Trump, on the other hand, lost that protection when he left office.
Attorney General Garland said he decided special counsel was needed in the Biden case after an initial investigation was conducted by John Lausch, a Trump appointee who serves as the top federal attorney in the Chicago area.
"This appointment underscores the department's public commitment to independence and accountability in highly sensitive matters, and to making decisions guided solely by facts and law," he told a news conference.
Meanwhile Hur, in a statement, said he would conduct an impartial investigation.
Separately, Republicans said they would be in a better position than the Justice Department to handle the investigation.
"When special counsel was appointed, it limited our ability to conduct some of the surveillance investigations that we wanted to undertake," said Republican James Comer, who will chair the House Oversight Committee.
Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith in November to oversee the Trump investigation, shortly after Trump said he would seek the Republican nomination to run again for president in 2024.
About 100 documents marked as secret were among thousands of records seized during an August search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Biden called Trump's behavior "totally irresponsible" in September.
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"People know I take classified documents, classified material seriously," President Biden told reporters Thursday.
Attorney General Garland disclosed Thursday that the Delaware documents were found on December 20, which means the White House was aware of it and didn't mention it when it made the initial disclosure on January 9.
Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean Pierre told reporters the Justice Department's review prevented the government from informing the public.
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