Among the documents from the time when Joe Biden was vice president, found last fall in the private office of the current head of the White House, there are 10 classified materials, including memos and intelligence reports of the American secret services, which related to topics such as Ukraine, Iran and Great Britain. a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Prosecutor General Merrick Garland received a preliminary report after investigating the documents, and must now decide how to proceed, including whether to open a criminal investigation, a law enforcement source said, news.ro said. .

John Lausch, Jr., the Chicago prosecutor to whom Garland entrusted the investigation, spoke several times with the attorney general and provided him with the necessary information.

The classified documents found in Biden’s personal office date from 2013-2016, when he was vice president. They were found in three or four boxes, which also contained non-classified documents, but are subject to the law “On Presidential Documents”.

The vast majority of the papers in Biden’s private office were personal documents of the Biden family, including materials related to funeral arrangements for Beau Biden, Joe Biden’s late son, and letters of condolence, a source told CNN. It is unclear whether the boxes of classified documents also contained personal materials, CNN reported.

How the documents were discovered

Attorney General Merrick Garland, the equivalent of attorney general in the United States, has assigned a Trump administration appointee from Chicago, Illinois, to investigate the case. Garland made the decision after receiving a referral from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Documents from Biden’s private office were discovered on Nov. 2, 2022, just six days before the midterm elections, but were not made public until Monday, Jan. 9, after being leaked to the press.

It came as Biden’s personal attorney was ordered to close the downtown Washington office Biden used for his activities at the University of Pennsylvania. The lawyer noticed a folder with “personal” written on it, opened the envelope and noticed that there were classified documents inside. A CNN source said the attorney sealed the envelope and called NARA.

After reaching out to NARA, Biden’s team turned over several boxes as a precaution, although many of them contained personal materials, the source said.

Decision of the Prosecutor General

After the Chicago attorney general completed the initial part of his investigation and presented preliminary findings to Garland, the attorney general must now decide how to proceed, especially since he was personally involved in some of the key decisions related to the investigation of the classified documents found in the former residence of President Donald Trump, including the decision to send the FBI to search his Mar-a-Lago residence, CNN mentions.

In the Trump case, Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to take over both the criminal investigation into Trump’s campaign activities after the 2020 election and the investigation into classified documents the former president took to his Florida resort.

The investigation into Biden is still far from that stage.

Garland chose Lausch to lead the investigation into the Biden documents because he is one of two U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump to remain in office. He did this to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, given that Lausch was not appointed by Biden.

In addition to Garland, Lausch held additional briefings with other Justice Department officials.

At this point, Lausch is not expected to request additional data collection, according to a CNN source.

Lausch was one of the few people in the Trump era not to be asked to resign after Biden’s inauguration in 2021, and two Democratic senators from Illinois supported the decision to keep him on, in part because he led a sensitive investigation into the political aspects of the view. on Michael Madigan, the former Democratic speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, accused of corruption.

What could be the consequences

The upheaval over classified documents found in Joe Biden’s former office has some politicians on edge.

Regardless of the outcome, the situation is embarrassing for the Biden administration and especially for Attorney General Garland. On Monday, he sat next to Joe Biden in Mexico, at a summit with the president of that country, as reporters shouted and asked about the investigation. Both US officials ignored the question, CNN reported.

Former President Donald Trump responded with a series of social media posts mocking Biden and publicly calling for the FBI to search Biden’s offices and even the White House for mishandled documents.

Key Democrats in Congress expressed confidence that Joe Biden handled government materials, even if classified documents appeared where they should not have been.

Newly appointed House Republicans have already vowed to expand their investigations into the Biden administration to include documents, and some are eyeing NARA as a target for further investigation.

On Tuesday, the new Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee asked the Director of National Intelligence to conduct an assessment of the damage caused by classified documents found in Biden’s personal office.