Hawley calls for special prosecutor to look into Biden’s handling of classified documents
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley on Wednesday wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Earlier this week, the White House said Biden’s lawyers found classified documents in a box in a locked closet when they were cleaning out his office at University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., and immediately turned them over to the National Archives. The documents were found in November, but the information did not become public until this week.
Crying hypocrisy, Hawley, a Missouri Republican, penned a letter to Garland on Wednesday accusing the Department of Justice of treating Biden differently than former President Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago home was searched by the FBI in August after they received a tip that he had not returned hundreds of documents to the National Archives.
“The double standard here is astounding,” Hawley wrote in the letter. “The underlying behavior at issue—a President’s retention of old classified documents dating back to a past presidency—is materially the same in both cases.”
There are differences between the two cases. While details are still emerging about Biden’s possession of classified documents — particularly why the discovery was not revealed to the public for more than two months — in Trump’s case, it involved several attempts by the National Archives to gain possession of the documents.
After a Trump aide informed the National Archives that documents had been found at Mar-a-Lago, they turned over 15 boxes. When the FBI was informed that there still may be more boxes in Trump’s possession — even after he had signed a waiver saying he had turned all of his documents over — the department obtained a search warrant and eventually left with 33 boxes of documents.
It is part of an ongoing investigation into whether Trump mishandled the documents led by special counsel Jack Smith.
Biden has attempted to highlight contrasts between how he and Trump handled their documents.
“I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office,” Biden said when asked by reporters about the documents in Mexico on Tuesday. “But I don’t know what’s in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were. I’ve turned over the boxes, they’ve turned over the boxes to the Archives. And we’re cooperating fully.”
Garland has directed a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney from Chicago to look into Biden’s handling of the documents, according to the Associated Press.
In his letter, Hawley called on Garland to take it a step farther and appoint a special prosecutor similar to Smith to look into Biden’s handling of the documents.
When the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August, Hawley and Sen. Eric Schmitt, a freshman Missouri Republican who was then campaigning for office, came to Trump’s defense. While painting the search as a political effort against a former president, Hawley called on Garland to resign and Schmitt promised to take a “wrecking ball” to the department should he be elected to Congress.
On Wednesday, Schmitt commented on an article by NBC that Biden aides had found more documents, but was sparse on details about where or how many.
“Wonder if Merrick Garland will authorize a predawn raid?” Schmitt tweeted.
The discovery has already become political fodder for House Republicans eager to investigate the Biden administration. Rep. James Comer, who is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has already demanded information from Biden’s attorneys and the National Archives.
