The US Attorney General, Merrick Garland, announced that he will name Robert Hur as Special Counsel to lead investigations and review the handling of the classified documents found at an office space formerly used by President Biden during his tenure as Vice President, as well as other documents found at his home in Delaware.
Robert Hur, a former US attorney and former Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General who served in the Trump administration, will return to working for the government from private practice and is expected to begin his new duties in the coming days.
Attorney General Garland announced the appointment on Thursday, January 11, a few days after the White House announced that several classified files were found in the President’s former office space.
Garland announced that the extraordinary circumstances required him to appoint a special counsel. He said that his appointment showed the public that the Department of Justice was committed to accountability and independence in such sensitive matters, and facts and the law solely guided the decision.
The announcement was made a few hours after the White House announced that a second batch of classified documents had been found in the garage of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden’s lawyers found the first batch of documents in his former office on November 2 while packing boxes to vacate the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. President Biden had been using the office for four years, starting in 2017 after leaving the Vice President’s office, until his presidential campaign in 2020.
Garland’s announcement followed a similar decision in November 2022 to appoint special counsel Jack Smith to oversee Donald Trump’s pending criminal investigations, including classified files found in his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2021 after his presidency ended.
President Biden’s lawyer, Richard Sauber, said in a statement on Thursday that they will continue to cooperate with the investigation. He said a thorough review will show that the documents were inadvertently misplaced and that the President and his lawyers acted swiftly after discovering the mistake.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden’s aides had looked into every place that the President could have stored classified documents, and reporters should assume that no more classified documents would be found.
During his announcement on Thursday, AG Garland gave reporters a timeline of the discovery and the beginning of the investigation. According to him, the Inspector General for the National Archives contacted a prosecutor on November 4, saying that classified documents were found at Biden’s former office. On December 20, the President’s lawyers informed authorities that they had found more documents in Biden’s garage.
The White House spoke out on January 9 about the first batch of documents found in the former office, and the next day, President Biden said at a news conference that he was surprised to hear of the discovery and had no idea what they contained.
On January 12, the White House announced a second batch had been found at Biden’s home.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said lawmakers would investigate the Department of Justice over the discovery, comparing the discovery of classified documents in the current US president’s office and house to the Trump case.
The difference in the cases was that Trump was resistant to an FBI search of his estate, while President Biden’s team cooperated fully with authorities.