Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on January 12, 2023 that he is appointing a special counsel to investigate whether Joe Biden mishandled classified information after reports that two batches of classified documents were found at two separate locations last week.
Merrick Garland named Robert Hur, a partner at Gibson Dunn, as the special prosecutor.
The second batch of classified documents were found in the garage of Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, reports say. Fox News reported that a third discovery has been made in Joe Biden’s residence.
The second batch of documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president were found next to Biden’s prized Corvette.
During a Thursday press conference, Biden was asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy “what [he was] thinking” in keeping the sensitive materials in his Delaware home.
“I’m going get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon”, Joe Biden responded to Peter Doocy, “but as I said earlier this week—and by the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage”, he added. “Okay? So it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street”.
“So it was in a locked garage?” Peter Doocy said, to which Biden responded: “Yes, as well as my Corvette”.
It was first revealed on January 10, 2023 that classified information was found in a private office Biden used in Washington, D.C., as part of his position at a University of Pennsylvania think tank.
The documents were discovered in November, but Biden’s legal team did not report the discovery until this week. The top-secret intelligence documents were related to Ukraine and Iran.
Biden responded to the news January 10, 2023 by saying he was “surprised” to learn about records that were in his office and went on to claim ignorance about the details of the documents found in his private office.
“I don’t know what’s in the documents”, he continued. “My lawyers have not suggested I not ask what documents they were”.
The fact that the documents were “left lying” around “at unsecured locations for a prolonged period of time makes the risks very grave”, Rajan Laad wrote for American Thinker. “Perhaps these documents were accessed and copied by unauthorized personnel or hostile foreign adversaries. Perhaps they were taken out for the purpose of being shared. Perhaps Hunter Biden came into possession of the documents which means their contents are already known to the CCP”.
Meanwhile, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz says the fact that Biden kept classified documents from his time as vice president nullifies any argument to prosecute former President Donald Trump.
“You cannot have two systems of justice unless the claims against Trump passed what I used to call the Clinton-Berger test”, Dershowitz said on Wednesday’s “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “Now it’s the Clinton-Berger-Biden test. Unless his conduct is so much more egregious and unlawful than what the three Democrats were accused of doing, you can’t have a criminal prosecution of Donald Trump”.
Dershowitz noted that Biden had the classified documents while he was vice president and he didn’t have declassifying authority.
“We know for example presidents can declassify material when they’re in office, but not after they leave office”, he said. “We know that vice presidents cannot declassify material”.
