Special counsel who investigated Biden over classified documents delivers his report

Special counsel Robert Hur has completed his investigation into classified documents that U.S. President Joe Biden improperly kept in his possession from his time as a senator and vice president. Attorney General Merrick Garland has informed Congress in a letter that, after completing his investigation, Hur sent him a report that will be made public shortly, after parts of it considered confidential are redacted.

Garland did not anticipate what the conclusions of the report were, but U.S. media reported this week that no criminal accusations are expected, only criticism for the handling of the documents.

“I am committed to making as much of the Special Counsel’s report public as possible, consistent with legal requirements and Department policy,” Garland wrote in his letter.

Although there are huge differences between the investigations against Biden and former president Donald Trump, Republicans will claim that the dismissal of the case without charges in Biden’s case is evidence of a double standard by the Department of Justice.

The investigation into Biden has lasted more than a year, since the discovery of a small number of documents classified as confidential inside a closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. They were inside an office of the Washington think tank, which has ties to the University of Pennsylvania and which Biden used periodically from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 presidential election campaign.

The documents were discovered on November 2, 2022, although their existence was not revealed until January 2023. On December 20, 2022 his lawyers found a second batch of classified documents in a room next to the garage of his home in Wilmington (Delaware). Garland disclosed this new discovery on January 12, 2023 while announcing the appointment of Hur, who had worked between 2018 and 2021 as Maryland State Attorney, as special counsel in the case.

In January 2023, Biden’s aides found more classified reports in the president’s private home in Wilmington, Delaware. FBI officers under the orders of the Department of Justice searched the property for 13 hours on January 21. It was an agreed search, without a warrant or court order, but rather offered voluntarily by Biden and his lawyers. After thoroughly reviewing the president’s belongings, the officers found new documents with classified markings and other material from the time when Biden was a senator and vice president.

The special counsel and his team have been analyzing the documents and the circumstances in which they turned up. They also questioned the president in early October at the White House, but do not appear to have found any evidence of criminal behavior. The case bears a resemblance to Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, who also took documents home and was exonerated.

Biden’s cooperative attitude and voluntary surrender of classified documents is the biggest difference with the Trump case, to which must be added the much larger amount of material that Trump retained, the exact contents of which is not known. The search of the Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach (Florida) took place after a request was ignored by Trump and his lawyers and a court order was issued. In one of the four indictments against Trump, the former president is accused in a Florida court of 40 counts involving the classified documents, including 32 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Despite the enormous differences between both cases, the dismissal of the Biden probe will give Trump rhetorical ammunition to portray himself as a martyr who is being persecuted unjustly and in a discriminatory manner. This claim is already part of his campaign strategy ahead of the presidential election on November 5, when he will most likely face Biden.

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