Three months have passed since classified documents were discovered in President Joe Biden‘s home and private office building, with the revelation throwing under-the-radar people into the national spotlight.
Republicans and Democrats alike are condemning the incident, asking for visitor logs and records of the documents’ content, as well as other people who were either involved or had access to the classified information.
TIMELINE: BIDEN CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT CONTROVERSY
Here are five people that heads are turning to as the controversy grows:
Ian Sams, White House spokesman
Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House, is the first line of defense for the Biden administration’s response to the scandal. He is holding calls with the press and making television appearances to smooth over the issue and defend the president.
As mounting criticism builds, both he and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre are working overtime to put out fires and appear both transparent to reporters and the public while also hesitating to say anything that could affect the DOJ’s investigation of the situation.
Sams’s work as a spokesman began in 2020, when he worked as national press secretary for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. He later joined the Biden-Harris administration to become a spokesman on the Department of Health and Human Services’s response to the pandemic.
Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president
Richard Sauber, who serves as special counsel to the president, gained national attention as the country learned about how he was involved with the handling of classified documents.
Sauber said that, using his security clearance, he helped facilitate the transfer of the third batch of classified documents to the DOJ after they were discovered at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home on Jan. 12. The two other batches were discovered in November 2022 at the Penn Biden Center and December 2022 at the Delaware home.
While he serves as counsel to the president, Sauber said all questions would now have to be directed to U.S. Attorney Robert Hur, who the DOJ appointed as special counsel to review the documents. Sauber was expected to assist the GOP-led investigations given Republicans won the majority in Congress but is most likely shifting gears after attaching his name to the classified documents controversy.
Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney
Bob Bauer is assisting Sauber in dealing with the legal issues surrounding the documents. As Biden’s personal attorney, he has issued several statements over the past two weeks, clarifying details about what occurred during the search at Biden’s Delaware home, where many documents were discovered.
Bauer worked previously as White House adviser for the Obama administration and worked for the Perkins Coie law firm for 30 years. Biden brought him into the documents case recently.
He led the searches for documents up until Jan. 20, but, unlike Sauber, he does not have a security clearance, a fact that has drawn heavy criticism from Republicans in Congress. Bauer has echoed Sam and Jean-Pierre’s statements regarding the timeline of the discovery, stating that the delay in public knowledge of the documents’ existence was “necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”
Stuart Delery, White House counsel
Stuart Delery, while not as prominent as Sauber or Bauer, is expected to have an integral role in responding to Republicans who are not backing down from demanding information.
Delery serves as a White House counsel overseeing legal operations and has been in recent communication with Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who has been requesting visitor logs from the Delaware residence — something the White House has said it does not possess.
In a letter to Delery, Comer threw back Biden’s comments regarding documents found in former President Donald Trump’s home.
“President Biden spoke candidly regarding his assessment of former President Trump’s handling of presidential records,” Comer wrote. “The Committee is concerned that President Biden has compromised sources and methods with his own mishandling of classified documents.”
Comer also asked for a list of all classified documents and names and security clearances of aides tasked with searching for the documents, with a deadline of Jan. 27. Delery responded on Monday that he would work in “good faith” to accommodate the requests.
Robert Hur, DOJ special counsel
U.S. Attorney Robert Hur was brought on by Attorney General Merrick Garland to serve as special counsel for the DOJ as it investigates the Biden classified documents case. Hur, a veteran of the department, previously worked across the aisle for Trump Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and now-FBI Director Christopher Wray.
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Hur mirrors special counsel Jack Smith, whom Garland appointed to serve on Trump’s documents case. Trump appointed Hur in 2017 to be the U.S. attorney for Maryland, something the state’s Democratic U.S. senators welcomed.
However, some conservatives are wary over Hur’s connection to Wray and to Rosenstein, who oversaw the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.
