Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s decision to allow personal lawyers for President Joe Biden who didn’t have security clearances to search for classified documents at Biden’s Delaware homes has been harshly criticized by Republicans.
The hands-off approach by the Biden Justice Department has also led to claims of double standards compared to how the DOJ handled the presence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, including an unprecedented raid by the FBI in August 2022.
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The Wall Street Journal reported this week the Justice Department considered, but decided against, having FBI agents watch over Biden’s personal lawyers as they searched for classified documents at two homes in Delaware. The outlet said that, instead of the FBI overseeing the searches, “the two sides agreed that Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys would inspect the homes, notify the Justice Department as soon as they identified any other potentially classified records, and arrange for law-enforcement authorities to take them.”
Biden’s personal lawyers did not have security clearances, yet DOJ allowed them to take charge of searching for classified documents anyway.
Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York and a contributing editor at National Review, said the Biden DOJ was “grossly negligent” in this decision.
McCarthy said it was “essential for Garland to ensure that the classified evidence was acquired by government agents with appropriate clearances” because “only such agents could ensure that the evidence was preserved for investigative purposes, and that national security was thus protected.”
But that isn’t what happened.
“There would have been no problem with permitting Biden’s aides to be present and participate. But the search still should have been conducted principally by law enforcement,” McCarthy said, noting that Biden knew by Nov. 2 that classified records had been in his possession for over five years at that point.
“Worse yet, Biden’s Justice Department knew the same things Biden knew, and still decided that Biden aides without security clearances, rather than the FBI, should conduct searches that were virtually certain to turn up — and, in fact, did turn up — more classified documents that those aides were not authorized to possess,” McCarthy concluded.
The president’s lawyers have admitted Obama-era records with classified markings on them were found in his office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington in early November, with more classified documents found in the president’s garage in Delaware in December, and further classified documents found in his Delaware home last Thursday.
Bob Bauer, one of Biden’s personal lawyers, defended the Biden team’s handling of the classified documents saga last week.
Biden’s personal attorneys allegedly first discovered classified documents in Biden’s possession on Nov. 2 at the Penn Biden Center. Biden’s lawyers contacted the White House counsel’s office, and then the White House counsel’s office contacted the National Archives. The National Archives informed the National Archives inspector general on Nov. 3, and the Archives watchdog contacted DOJ on Nov. 4.
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Last week, Garland selected former Trump appointee U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to serve as special counsel to investigate Biden’s potential mishandling of classified documents.
The Penn Biden Center did not launch until February 2018, but the Obama-Biden administration concluded in January 2017, meaning the Justice Department immediately knew that the classified documents held at Biden’s office in the nation’s capital must have been somewhere else for at least a year following the end of his vice presidency — with the reasonable conclusion being that classified records might also be present at one of Biden’s homes.
