Garland Appoints Special Counsel to investigate President Biden
Insights from White Collar Criminal Defense Attorneys Trusted Nationwide
At 1:15 on January 12, 2023 Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of Robert Hur to investigate President Biden. The special counsel will investigate the existence of classified documents located in Joe Biden’s garage and personal office.
Robert Hur served as the U.S. Attorney during the Trump administration and is the second special counsel appointed by Merrick Garland. Garland appointed Hurr to investigate whether any federal laws were violated after roughly 10 documents marked as classified were discovered by Biden’s personal lawyers at his vice-presidential office at the Penn Biden Center on November 2. A second batch of documents was unveiled on Thursday in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington home and another document was located in an adjacent room.
Strangely, the revelation by Biden’s lawyers just days before the mid-term elections escaped the public eye until just recently. Garland quietly assigned the United States Attorney in Chicago, John Lausch, to review the documents and conduct an investigation. That investigation is now complete and Lausch recommended the appointment of a Special Counsel – indicating he has found something of interest that needs further investigation. In other words, this is no open-and-shut case.
People will be quick to call out apparent hypocrisy by Garland who appears to have publicly chastised Trump for mishandling classified documents while keeping Biden’s indiscretions quiet. However, the cases are not entirely similar. Biden only possessed a handful of documents – an amount that could be considered inadvertent. Trump on the other hand, had 184 classified documents in his possession and some included the “highest levels of classification”. Biden’s documents were handed over by his lawyers while it took a search warrant to obtain Trump’s records.
18 U.S.C. 1924 makes it a five year federal felony to knowingly remove classified documents without authority and retain documents in an unauthorized location. The term “knowing” is important here. Special counsel in both cases will investigate to determine whether Biden and Trump knew that classified records were located in their residences and offices. For Trump, this case will be much easier. Trump was at least on notice when the National Archives requested the return of the records and the sheer volume alone is problematic to a defense. Biden may have an easier case of it but the removal of the records from a secured facility is in and of itself problematic for Biden.
In sum, this may just be Trump’s lucky break when it comes to the classified documents special counsel investigation. It would be a political nightmare to indict Trump for something that the current sitting President also did wrong.
Update:
At live public comments on January 12th, intended to be on the strength of the economy, President Biden addressed his mishandling of classified information. He first exclaimed that his Corvette is in a locked garage which ostensibly is where the classified documents were kept.
Ronald Chapman II is the founder of Chapman, Dowling & Mallek and a top-rated Michigan federal criminal defense attorney who represents clients in federal courts nationwide. His practice is focused on defending individuals and organizations in complex federal prosecutions, including white-collar criminal matters and healthcare fraud investigations.
Throughout his career, Mr. Chapman has helped clients avoid more than $550 million in potential penalties, primarily in cases involving physicians, healthcare providers, executives, and professionals facing federal charges. He is widely recognized for his work as a Michigan healthcare fraud defense attorney, as well as for his results in white collar criminal defense in Michigan, where cases often involve parallel civil, regulatory, and criminal exposure.
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2 Comments
All that might be true but Trump was the President when he took possession of the classified documents and Biden was vice-president. There is a huge difference.
The Trump defense claims that he declassified the documents using his power as CINC. (Harry Truman created the first classified documents using his own CINC powers. Presidential authority creates the secrecy and removes the secrecy). For Mr Biden to make the same claim, he would require evidence that President Obama declassified the papers he took home, because as VP he had no such authority.
And as for the Pakistani intelligence officer who visited Secretary of State Clinton's house to repair her email server on which classified documents were stored, he is toast if it comes to a trial. Arguably she should not have had the material on her home computer, but the spy who took advantage of access to the docs had no authority to possess them. If he burned a few disks or stored them on a thumb drive, and those items were recovered, there's a prima facie case for espionage.