House Democrat under fire after suggesting classified docs were 'planted' on Biden
Classified documents from the time President Joe Biden was vice president have now been discovered at one of his private offices and his garage in Wilmington, igniting a political crisis that many say undermines investigation targeting former President Donald Trump, who was found to be hoarding classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
According to Fox News congressional correspondent Chad Pergram, Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson is "suspicious" of the "timing."
"I'm suspicious of the timing of it... things can be planted on people, places and things can be planted or things things can be planted in places and then discovered conveniently," Johnson said Thursday.
Johnson's comments came around the same time that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he was appointing Robert Hur as Special Counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents by Biden.
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Johnson quickly face criticism for his remarks.
"Bewildering stuff here as a Dem adopts a classic Trump line," said Politico's Sam Stein.
"What? The White House said the second set of classified documents were found in his garage," added Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey in response to Johnson's claims.
In a bid to defuse accusations of political interference, Garland already assigned a Trump-appointed prosecutor in Chicago to conduct an initial investigation into what happened in Biden's case.
The first cache of Biden documents was discovered a week before last year's midterm elections but only acknowledged by the White House on Monday, prompting accusations from Republicans of a cover-up and the unequal application of the law in the two cases.
"I think Congress has to investigate this," newly-installed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters at his first news conference.
"Here's an individual that's been in office for more than 40 years. Here's an individual that sat on '60 minutes,' that was so concerned about President Trump's documents, locked in behind, and now we find... a vice president keeping it for years out in the open in different locations."
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Trump had earlier demanded on his Truth Social platform: "When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?"
Legal analysts have pointed to major difference between the cases however, particularly over the size of the huge hoard of documents Trump had stored at his residence after leaving the White House in 2021.
The FBI carting away some 11,000 papers after serving a search warrant in August, and Trump could face obstruction of justice charges after spending months resisting government efforts to recover his trove and his failure to comply with a subpoena demanding their return.
The White House, in contrast, says it has been "fully cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice" since the Biden discovery.
After the first batch of Biden documents was discovered at his former office at the Penn Biden Center think tank last November, lawyers turned them over to the National Archives, which handles all such materials, the White House counsel's office said.
Lawyers for Biden then scoured possible locations for any other stray documents.
Nevertheless, serious questions remain about when the second batch of documents was unearthed, who took both sets from the White House and if they have been accessed since Biden left the vice-presidency in 2017.
With additional reporting by AFP