Not jealous. After the discovery of confidential documents in an old office Joe Biden et al in his garageJustice Minister Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that he was appointing a special prosecutor to investigate, as he had done in November pour Donald Trump.
Attorney Robert Hur is a former Department of Justice (DOJ) corruption case specialist who now worked in the private sector and promised in his first statement that he would be “impartial.”
“Inadvertently moved”
On Thursday, the White House acknowledged that a “small number” of documents had been found in Joe Biden’s private residence in Wilmington, Delaware, three days after admitting that around 10 documents had been discovered in an office. that Biden used when he was vice president. According to NBC News, the new documents were stored in the US president’s garage. At a press conference on Thursday morning, he defended himself, stating that his garage was “locked”.
“We are confident that a careful investigation will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced and that the president and his attorneys acted promptly upon discovering this error,” a lawyer for Joe Biden said in a statement.
“Total cooperation”
Merrick Garland detailed the timeline of the case:
- November 4: The National Archives informs the Department of Justice (DOJ) that confidential documents have been found by Joe Biden’s teams in his former office at the Penn Biden Center.
- November 9: The FBI opens an investigation to determine if classified documents were mishandled.
- November 14: Garland puts a DOJ prosecutor on the case.
- December 20: Lawyers for Joe Biden inform the DOJ that more documents have been found in his residence.
- January 12: Garland appoints a special prosecutor, who operates semi-independently and can then make recommendations for possible indictment to the DOJ.
Joe Biden assured that he and his lawyers had offered “full cooperation” to the Department of Justice. A way of marking his difference with Donald Trump, who refused for months to return 184 confidential documents to the National Archives and then to the FBI, pushing the latter to carry out a spectacular search at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Voluntary or accidental mismanagement
At this stage, the two cases have notable differences, in their magnitude, but also in view of the actions of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The latter knew he had confidential documents at home, and refused to return them despite repeated requests from the government and a subpoena validated by a grand jury.
“Technically, even accidental mishandling of classified documents breaks the law,” he said. 20 Minutes national security lawyer Bradley Moss. But the fundamental difference is that “the Department of Justice rarely launches a lawsuit when (it is) accidental and there is no obstruction”. According to him, it is for this reason that an indictment of Donald Trump “is a real possibility” while Joe Biden is not threatened, “at least for the moment”.