The announcement by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, came after the discovery of two batches of classified documents from Mr. Biden’s time as vice president

WASHINGTON, D.C. (TIP): Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Thursday. January 12,  appointed Robert K. Hur, a veteran prosecutor who worked in the Trump administration, to handle the investigation into how classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president ended up at his private office and home.

Mr. Hur, who previously served as the U.S. attorney for Maryland during the Trump administration, is responsible for investigating “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” at the office of Mr. Biden’s think tank in Washington and his residence in Wilmington, Del., according to the order signed by Mr. Garland on Thursday.

Mr. Hur, who also served as a top department official in the deputy attorney general’s office in 2017 and 2018, is authorized to prosecute any crimes arising from the inquiry or to refer matters for prosecution by federal attorneys in other jurisdictions, the order said. The decision to select a special counsel to look into the handling of the documents, which include briefing materials on foreign countries, comes at an extraordinary moment for Mr. Garland, who in November tapped Jack Smith, a former war crimes and public corruption, prosecutor, to lead the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump’s mishandling of government documents and his actions related to the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

A senior department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the decision by Mr. Garland “was not taken lightly” but was required under department regulations as “a textbook example” of an investigation that necessitated appointment of a special counsel.

The appointment is intended to insulate the Justice Department from accusations of partisanship at a time when the new Republican majority in the House has embarked on an aggressive and open-ended investigation into what they claim is the Biden administration’s bias against their party. Mr. Hur, who is a partner at the white-collar law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, had been appointed by Mr. Trump as the U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland in 2018, leaving that position when the Trump administration ended.

The White House has acknowledged twice this week that Mr. Biden’s team had found batches of classified papers in two locations associated with him, in his former office at a think tank in Washington and in the garage of his home in Wilmington, Del.

A batch of classified papers, which is said to have included briefing materials on foreign governments dating from Mr. Biden’s time as vice president, were found on Nov. 2, as lawyers were closing down his office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington.

They alerted the National Archives, which retrieved them the next morning. Archives officials then informed the Justice Department; Mr. Garland assigned the preliminary phase of the inquiry to John R. Lausch Jr., the U.S. attorney in Chicago and a Trump appointee, to blunt criticism that he was seeking to protect the Democratic president who appointed him.

Like Mr. Lausch, Mr. Hur was a political appointee of Mr. Trump. During the Trump administration, he was the top aide to the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, himself a former U.S. attorney in Maryland.

But Mr. Hur had a significant career in an apolitical role as an assistant federal prosecutor in that office from 2007 to 2014, and then had worked as a trial lawyer in private practice before coming back to the Justice Department to assist Mr. Rosenstein.

According to a biography, Mr. Hur’s prosecutorial career included cases involving gang violence, gun offenses and drug trafficking, as well as white-collar crimes like fraud, public corruption, tax offenses, hacking, and intellectual property theft.

Mr. Hur also prosecuted high-profile domestic terrorism cases.

Mr. Hur graduated from Harvard College and Stanford Law School and clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the biography said. He also worked as an aide to Christopher Wray, now the F.B.I. director, when Mr. Wray ran the Justice Department’s criminal division in the George W. Bush administration.

Meanwhile, President Biden said he was ‘cooperating fully and completely’ with a Justice Department review. He  told reporters on Thursday, January 12,  that he was cooperating fully with the Justice Department in its investigation into classified documents found at his Delaware residence and promised a further explanation in the days ahead. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, used his morning news conference to condemn Biden’s behavior. “This was discovered before the election,” McCarthy said, a reference to the Nov. 2 discovery of documents at a Washington think tank. He added: “Congress has to investigate this.”

McCarthy also pointed out Biden’s criticism of former President Trump’s handling of documents, wondering if Biden had used the Justice Department to raid Mar-a-Lago. He added: “They knew this happened to President Biden before the election, but they kept it secret from the American public.”

(Source: agencies)