In a move that is sure to raise eyebrows, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the presence of classified documents at President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington office.
The appointment was announced on Thursday and is seen as a way to ensure impartiality and fairness in the investigation and avoid comparisons with previous politically explosive investigations, such as the retention of top secret records at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
“I think it’s not only the right decision and a prudent decision, I think it’s a politically necessary decision,” Solomon Wisenberg, who served as deputy to Kenneth Starr during the independent counsel investigations into former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. “Why,” he added, “give yourself the grief of the comparison of the two situations” of a special counsel for Trump, a Republican, but not for Biden, a Democrat.
Perception of Impartiality and Fairness
The appointment of a special counsel is seen as a way to ensure impartiality and fairness in the investigation. Brandon Van Grack, a former Justice Department prosecutor who served on then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as it investigated ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, said that appointing a special counsel can help expedite an investigation, ensure it has appropriate resources and create “at least the perception of impartiality and fairness.”
“With respect to this decision, this specific decision, it’s at least understandable why the attorney general would want all of those benefits,” Van Grack said.
The Discovery of Classified Documents
The investigation into the classified documents at Biden’s home and the office was prompted by the discovery of a document with classified markings from Biden’s time as vice president found in his personal library and other classified documents in his garage.
Garland said Biden’s lawyers informed the Justice Department on Thursday morning of the discovery of the classified document at Biden’s home. He said that FBI agents first retrieved other documents from the garage in December.
The Special Counsel Appointed
To lead the investigation, Garland has appointed Robert Hur, a former senior Justice Department official in the Trump administration who served as U.S. attorney in Maryland. He joins Jack Smith, a former public corruption prosecutor investigating the documents found at Mar-a-Lago and efforts to undo the 2020 election, and John Durham, who’s secured one guilty plea and lost two criminal trials in three and a half years investigating the Trump-Russia probe.
It’s worth noting that there’s a long history of specially appointed prosecutors investigating political scandals, including Iran-Contra during Ronald Reagan’s presidency and Whitewater during Clinton’s presidency.
Whether this investigation will follow that same path remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure, the appointment of a special counsel, in this case, is a significant development that political observers will closely watch.
The White House earlier this week acknowledged that the President’s lawyers found a “small number” of classified documents at the office of his former institute in Washington.
That discovery led Garland to ask the U.S. attorney in Chicago, John Lausch, a Trump administration holdover, to investigate the matter. However, Lausch is now preparing to leave the Justice Department.
In this case, the move to appoint a special counsel indicates that the Justice Department is taking the matter of classified documents at the President’s home and office very seriously. It also shows that the department is committed to independence and accountability in particularly sensitive investigations, as Garland stated in his announcement.
The investigation is expected to take several months, and the public can expect regular updates on its progress. Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed, is well-respected in the legal community and is known for his integrity and impartiality. He is expected to conduct a thorough investigation and will have access to all the necessary resources to do so.
The appointment of a special counsel to investigate the presence of classified documents at President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington office is a significant development that political observers will closely watch.
It indicates that the Justice Department is committed to independence and accountability in sensitive investigations and taking classified documents at the President’s home and office seriously.
The public can expect regular updates on the progress of the investigation.
