Members of President Biden’s 2024 reelection team are worried that a Justice Department report into President Biden’s retention of classified documents will reveal “embarrassing details,” according to a new report.
Attorney General Merrick Garland asked special counsel Robert Hur to discuss the matter on January 12, 2023, after the FBI searched Biden’s Washington, D.C., office and Delaware mansion for classified files after he took office as vice president. requested an investigation.
More than a year later, the Biden campaign expects Mr. Hsu’s team to release a final report on its investigation into classified documents as early as this week, including information and photos that could complicate the president’s re-election efforts. Axios report.
A spokesperson for the Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
On November 2, at least a dozen classified files were discovered by Biden’s lawyers at the Penn Biden Center think tank in the nation’s capital, some of them related to Britain, Ukraine and Iran.
The findings were not made public until after the midterm elections, in which Democrats outperformed expectations. Biden’s personal lawyer discovered more intelligence files in the library and garage of the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, in December of the same year.
Between November 2022 and February 2023, the FBI searched Biden’s offices, home and Biden’s Rehoboth Beach residence, as well as additional classified documents in Wilmington.
Biden’s eldest son, Hunter Biden, was accessing files stored next to his father’s 1967 Corvette Stingray, according to photos found on an abandoned laptop. The photo was taken on the same day he sent threatening letters to employees and demanded that his father close the 7-Eleven. -The figure transaction was concluded on July 30, 2017.
Another photo taken by Hunter earlier that year showed a box labeled “Important Physician’s.” [sic] +Photos. ” Its contents are unclear, but some reports suggest Biden may have kept the material for his 2017 memoir, “Dad, Promise Me.”
Mr. Biden, 81, dismissed the scandal as a dispute over “drift documents,” saying the files were kept in a “locked garage” and that he was “fully cooperating” with Mr. Heo’s investigation. Stated.
The president was “voluntarily” questioned in October, and his son was also questioned the following month as part of the investigation, which reportedly involved more than 100 witnesses.
House Republicans are currently conducting an impeachment inquiry seeking evidence that Joe Biden abused his office as vice president or personally benefited from Hunter’s plans to spread influence with foreign groups. There is.
The House Oversight Committee has scheduled interviews with Hunter and his eldest son, James Biden, for later this month, which is expected to shed more light on the extent of their ties to overseas business. Shortly after Joe became President Obama.
Special Counsel Jack Smith accused former President Donald Trump of keeping classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago mansion even after leaving office in January 2021 and of lying to federal authorities who requested information. The charges were filed in June 2023.
Smith has indicted the 77-year-old Trump on 40 counts of keeping U.S. intelligence files, some of which are marked “top secret” by his own lawyers and the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They are asking for the help of servants and resort employees to help hide documents from the Ministry. F.B.I.
The National Archives repeatedly requested the former president return hundreds of documents before referring the matter to the Justice Department in early 2022.
Federal prosecutors then ignored the grand jury and authorized an FBI search of President Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on August 8, 2022, which uncovered 102 classified documents that were not voluntarily provided. It was done.
Photos released as part of the indictment show boxes of materials stored in an underground storage facility with a ballroom, bedrooms, bathrooms and ready access to the exterior, prosecutors said. The photo shows that the door had been left open.
Mr. Trump’s former lawyer testified to the Justice Department several months ago that he was unaware that some of the boxes containing the documents were hidden from Mr. Trump and that all classified information had been turned over.
U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon has currently scheduled a trial date for May 20, 2024 in the Southern District of Florida.
