The Justice Department of the United States has opened an investigation after lawyers for the president Joe Biden they will meet in november a dozen classified documents that the current president had in a private office that he opened in a Washington think tank after occupying the vice presidency con Barack Obama.
Although the case apparently has profound differences with that of former President Donald Trumpwhich is under a criminal investigation for the irregular handling of hundreds of classified and top-secret documents that he took with him when he left the White House and were located by the FBI at his private residence in Mar-a-Lago (Florida) , represents at least a image coup for Bidenwho when the case of his predecessor broke out accused him of “irresponsible“.
also can hinder the work of justice in his investigation of Trump, which includes the possibility that he obstructed justice and destroyed documentation. And so far it has served the republican to throw a immediate counterattack. “When is he going FBI to make one raid in the many houses of Joe Biden, perhaps even in the White House?”, He has written in Truth, his social network.
The former president has also written that the Biden documents “definitely were not declassified“, delving into his thesis, questioned, that he did not do anything irregular because he had the authority as president to declassify material and he assures, without evidence, that he had done it with everything located in Mar-a-Lago.
The development
Biden’s documents were located on November 2 by personal lawyers for the president when they were packing files housed in a locked cabinet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, a private entity of the president attached to the University of Pennsylvania, where the current president was an honorary professor between 2017 and 2019.
Immediately after the discovery White House legal office informed the National Archiveswho took possession of the documents the next day and notified the Department of Justiceas reported by CBS, which has given the first information on the case.
Chain sources have assured that the documents that were in possession of Biden do not include nuclear secrets and although other media sources have not described what type of information the documents included or their level of classification, one of ‘The Guardian’ has assured that some were marked as “Top Secret”.
In a statement Richard Sauber, President Biden’s special counsel, has assured that “the White House it is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice” regarding the discovery.
Sauber has also highlighted that the documents “They had not been the subject of any prior request or consultation by the National Archives”. Likewise, he has said that “since the discovery, the president’s personal lawyers have cooperated with the archives and the Justice Department in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden administration documents are in the archives’ possession.”
That part of the communiqué tries to underline the differences with the case of Trumpwhat for months he evaded claims of the Archives and only agreed to deliver some documents under the legal action pressure. Later it was discovered that still had in his possession thousands moreas confirmed after the discovery in August in Mar-a-Lago, where at least 103 classified were found.
Trump-appointed prosecutors
Merrick Garland, in charge of Justice, has assigned, according to various reports, the case of Biden’s papers, in which the FBIa John Lausch, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois what was it Trump-appointed. Another of the prosecutors appointed by the former president, David Weissfrom Delaware, is investigating Hunter Biden.
Those two decisions of Justice to put prosecutors appointed by the Republican leading investigations into the Bidens is interpreted as an attempt to underscore the impartiality, that Garland has also sought in the Trump investigation by naming a fiscal especial, Jack Smith.