A former US attorney appointed by Donald Trump has been named as a special counsel to probe President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents (Pictures: AP)
An appointee of ex-President Donald Trump has been named special counsel to investigate how classified documents wound up at President Joe Biden’s home and former office.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that former Maryland US Attorney Robert Hur will oversee the probe into Biden’s handling of the classified material.
Hur, a litigation partner at the Washington, DC-based law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, was appointed by Trump to as chief federal law enforcement officer in Maryland. Hur was confirmed by the Senate unanimously and served in the role from 2018 to 2021.
‘Under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter,’ said Garland on Thursday.
Robert Hur was appointed by ex-President Donald Trump as chief federal law enforcement officer in Maryland (Picture: AP)
‘I am confident that Mr Hur will carry out his responsibility in an even-handed and urgent manner and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department.’
Hur said he plans to ‘conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment’.
‘I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service,’ stated Hur.
Hur will take over the probe from Chicago federal prosecutor John Lausch. Lausch – picked by Garland to review Biden’s classified records recovered in November – last week advised that a special counsel be appointed for the matter.
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Garland announced Hur’s appointment on the same day that Biden acknowledged that his lawyers had found his classified records and that he was ‘cooperating fully and completely’ with the Justice Department’s investigation.
Biden said his lawyers ‘discovered a small number of documents with classified markings in storage areas and file cabinets in my home and my, my personal library’.
Also on Thursday, special counsel to the president Richard Sauber stated that Biden’s lawyers found ‘a small number of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings’. All but one of the documents were in a ‘storage space in the President’s Wilmington residence garage’, according to Sauber.
The matter first emerged on Monday with reports that Biden’s lawyers found roughly 10 classified documents from his vice presidency in his office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the presence of documents with classified markings found at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at an office in Washington, DC (Picture: AP)
All the classified records have been handed over to the National Archives.
After Garland’s announcement, Sauber said the White House will cooperate with Hur’s probe. Sauber said he is ‘confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake’.
Hur’s appointment comes nearly two months after Garland selected longtime federal prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
Smith is overseeing the probe into the records Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago home, as well as the January 6 Capitol riot and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
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Former Maryland US Attorney Robert Hur, who was appointed by Donald Trump, will oversee the probe into Joe Biden’s classified records.
