Special counsel interviews Biden about handling of classified documents
Joe Biden voluntarily granted an interview to the special counsel investigating the president’s handling of classified documents before he won the Oval Office, his administration said late Monday.
Robert Hur talked with Biden at the White House on Sunday and Monday in what the president’s team called an act of cooperation.
“As we have said from the beginning, the president and the White House are cooperating with this investigation, and as it has been appropriate, we have provided relevant updates publicly, being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation,” Biden spokesperson Ian Sams said.
The US attorney general Merrick Garland in January appointed Hur to investigate Biden’s retention of classified documents from his time as vice-president to Barack Obama. At the time, lawyers for Biden reported having found classified documents at his home and former thinktank.
Hur is a former federal prosecutor appointed during Donald Trump’s presidency and ex-top justice department official who has vowed to “swiftly” conduct a “fair, impartial and dispassionate” investigation into Biden’s handling of government secrets.
His appointment was meant to shield the justice department from conflict of interest or political interference accusations.
There are major differences between Biden’s classified documents case and that involving his Republican rival Trump. Mainly, Trump retained hundreds of classified documents after his presidency and only partially complied with a grand jury subpoena that preceded the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 as well as the filing of criminal charges against him in connection with those records.
Biden and his lawyers by contrast proactively returned the two dozen or so classified documents in his possession as soon as they were discovered. The president had also not been subpoenaed.
One set of documents in the case Hur has been handling was found at the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center for Diplomacy in Washington DC on 2 November. Biden was an honorary professor there until 2019, the year before he successfully ran for the presidency against Trump.
Another set of documents which Hurr has been examining were found at Biden’s Delaware home on 20 December.
Within days of Hur’s appointment, Biden told journalists that he would cooperate with the special counsel investigation into the classified materials at his home and office.
The president said “a handful of documents” had been stored “in the wrong place”. But otherwise, he said, “I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there.
“There’s no ‘there’ there.”
Biden has signed up to run for re-election in 2024. At this point, most key national and state polls predict Trump to be his challenger, despite the legal peril that he is facing which is unprecedented for a former president.
Trump’s retention of classified documents produced one of four criminal indictments filed against him this year. The indictments collectively contain more than 90 criminal charges also accusing him of hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels as well as efforts to forcibly nullify his defeat to Biden.
The ex-president has also grappled with assorted civil litigation, including a recent judge’s ruling which found that Trump and his business organization had committed fraud by creating false and misleading financial statements.