Democrats lauded Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel to probe President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials while being peppered with questions over the weekend on additional document discoveries.
There are many unanswered questions regarding why Biden had classified documents from his vice presidency at his think tank’s Washington, D.C., office and his Wilmington residence, in addition to the circumstances in which they were found and how transparent the White House has been on the matter. Democratic lawmakers appearing on cable news shows Saturday and Sunday were asked to respond to all of these. Reactions varied at times, though there was consistent support for Garland’s selection of special counsel Robert Hur to investigate.
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“I do think it’s the right move,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said of appointing a special counsel to ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “The attorney general has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public. And here, I don’t think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel, and I think that special counsel will do the proper assessment.”
Schiff declined to rule out the possibility that national security was jeopardized through the mishandling of these materials, something he had also suggested after the FBI seizure of classified documents from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last year.
“I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” he explained. “We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents. I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the think tank, as well as the home of President Biden.”
“Classified documents are to be taken seriously, and they are to be handled with a great deal of care. And no one is above the law,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said in a later interview on the same program. “So I’m glad to see the Justice Department doing its work, and we ought to let that work proceed.”
“That shouldn’t have happened. It needs to be investigated, and it is being investigated,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who served on the House Jan. 6 select committee, said on MSNBC on Saturday when asked about the special counsel appointment. “So we will have to wait and find out all of the details, and I’m confident that we will get all of the details. So, I am sure he is unhappy about it. I haven’t spoken to him, but who would be happy about this?”
In separate interviews, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) both acknowledged that the situation was a difficult one in terms of optics for the president.
“Well, it’s certainly embarrassing,” Stabenow, who serves in Senate Democratic leadership, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday of Biden’s handling of the matter. Still, she defended the president and his lawyers for “moving to correct it, working with the Department of Justice, working with everyone involved with the [National] Archives.”
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Garamendi said in a Fox News Sunday appearance that the Justice Department could reassure the public that the institution was not politicized by “doing exactly what they are doing now. We have a special counsel in place. The documents and the whole issue is before the special counsel, and the investigations will go forward with regard to these classified documents that were found.”
“It’s an embarrassment, no doubt about it,” Garamendi continued. “Is there more to it? I doubt it, but we’ll find out from the special counsel as he goes about his business.”
