Special prosecutor Robert Hur has completed his investigation into confidential documents that United States President Joe Biden improperly kept in his possession from his time as senator and vice president. Attorney General Merrick Garland has informed Congress in a letter that, after completing his investigation, Hur has provided a report that will largely be made public shortly, when parts of it that are considered confidential are removed.
Garland does not anticipate what the conclusions of the investigation are, but US media reported this week that no criminal accusations are expected, but only criticism for the handling of the documents.
“As I have made clear with respect to each of the special counsels who have served since I took office, I am committed to making public as much of the special counsel's report as possible,” Garland wrote in his letter.
Although the differences between the investigations against Biden and former President Donald Trump are abysmal, Republicans will use the file of Biden's case without the presentation of charges as 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 in a closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. They were in an office of that think tank dependent on the University of Pennsylvania in Washington that 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 appearance was not revealed until January 2023. His lawyers found on December 20 of that year a second batch of classified documents in a room next to the garage of his home in Wilmington (Delaware ). Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed this new discovery on January 12, 2023 while announcing the appointment of lawyer Robert Hur, who worked between 2018 and 2021 as a Maryland State Attorney, as special prosecutor in the case to investigate “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records.”
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Also in January, Joe Biden's aides found more classified reports in the US president's private home in Wilmington, Delaware. Then, FBI agents under the orders of the Department of Justice searched the home of the president of the United States for 13 hours on January 21 of last year. It was an agreed search, without a requirement or court order, but rather offered voluntarily by Biden and his lawyers. After thoroughly reviewing the president's belongings, the agents found new documents with confidential classification marks and annexed materials, both from the time when Biden was a senator and when he was vice president.
The special prosecutor and his team have been analyzing the documents and the circumstances under which they appeared. They also questioned the president in early October at the White House, but they do not appear to have found any evidence of criminal behavior. What happened with the current president has parallels with the case of Trump's vice president, Mike Pence, who had also taken papers to his house and was exonerated.
The collaboration of the current president and his lawyers and the voluntary delivery of the classified papers is the biggest difference with the Trump case, to which is added the much larger amount of documents that Trump retained and their content, although this is not known. They know details. The search of the Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach (Florida) occurred after a request ignored by Trump and his lawyers and after a court order due to indications of possible crimes. In one of the four cases in which he is charged, Trump is accused in a Florida court of 40 alleged crimes over 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 the cases, the shelving of the investigation against Biden will give him rhetorical ammunition to present himself as a martyr persecuted unjustly and in a discriminatory manner. The former president has included the complaint of political persecution due to the accusations as part of his strategy for the presidential elections on November 5, where he will likely face Biden.
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