US Attorney General Merrick Garland Thursday announced the appointment of special counsel in the investigation of classified documents from the Obama-Biden Administration discovered in an office formerly used by President Joe Biden. Special counselor Robert Hur is a former career Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor and former US Attorney for the District of Maryland. In his announcement of the appointment, Garland said: 

This appointment underscores for the public the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law. 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.

Special counsel to President Biden Richard Sauber released a statement on Monday regarding the discovery. Sauber stated that President Biden and his personal counsel who discovered the documents have cooperated with the National Archives and the DOJ “to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in possession of the Archive.”

The Justice Department’s investigation seeks to determine whether there has been unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records. Classified documents are regulated by Executive Order 13256, which outlines the procedure to classify, access and handle confidential information of national security, and US Code § 1924, which prohibits knowingly removing classified documents without authority and with intent to keep such documents at an unauthorized location. 

The classified documents in question were discovered in early November 2022 at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, DC and allegedly stored in a locked closet. After notifying the National Archive of this discovery, Biden’s personal lawyers additionally searched both of his private residences in Delaware where they believed files from the Presidential office may have been shipped during transition in 2017 and found a “small number of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings” in storage at Biden’s Wilmington residence. Sauber has stated President Biden’s intention to continue to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s review of these discoveries. Additionally, Sauber said that the President takes classified information seriously:

We have cooperated closely with the Justice department throughout its review and we will continue that cooperation with the Special Counsel. We are 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.

In contrast to President Biden notification to the National Archives of his attorneys’ discovery of classified documents, the National Archives reported to Congress in October 2022 that former-President Trump had not returned all the documents his administration was required to under the Presidential Records Act.