White House pledges to cooperate with special counsel over classified documents – as it happened

Attorney general Merrick Garland appointed former US attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to handle the inquiry into classified material found at Joe Biden’s home and former office. That means there are now two special counsels looking into the conduct of American presidents, the other being Jack Smith, who is overseeing the investigation of former president Donald Trump for the government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago, the January 6 insurrection and the broader plot to overturn the 2020 election. The decisions of Hur and Smith could have major consequences for American politics in the months to come.

Here’s what else happened today:

• House Republicans said they’d mount their own investigation of the classified files found at the president’s properties.

• The House Democratic leader called on George Santos to resign for lying about his qualifications. Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the chamber’s ethics body will handle the complaints against the Republican lawmaker.

• Inflation is on the decline in the United States, according to government data released today.

• Hunter Biden has issues that are more significant than Democrats would like to admit, but may add up to less than Republicans believe, the New York Times reports.

The daily sparring match is ongoing in the White House briefing room, as press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre parries questions from reporters wanting to know more about the classified documents inquiry.

As the Guardian’s David Smith reports, Jean-Pierre wouldn’t get into whether Joe Biden would consent to an interview with investigators:

But she said the president does not know what was in the documents:

And didn’t have much more to say besides that:

Here’s more from Richard Luscombe on what we know about Robert Hur, the just-appointed special counsel tasked with getting to the bottom of how classified documents ended up in Joe Biden’s home and former office:

Robert Hur, appointed on Thursday as special counsel in the case of Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents while out of office, is according to his LinkedIn profile a “seasoned trial lawyer, former supreme court law clerk and former US attorney … with decades of experience in government and in private practice”.

An appointee of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, the 50-year-old was US attorney for Maryland from 2018 to 2021 before becoming a partner at Gibson Dunn, a Washington law firm specializing in white-collar “enforcement, investigations and litigation”.

Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director turned CNN law enforcement analyst, said Hur was a “well-informed, industrious, hard-working guy”.

A top Republican government watchdog in Congress announced he would open an investigation into the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office.

“With or without a special counsel, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee will investigate President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and the Swamp’s efforts to hide this information from the American people,” House oversight committee chair James Comer said in a statement.

“The National Archives and Records Administration, the White House, and the Department of Justice were aware of the classified documents stashed in a closet at the Penn Biden Center before the election, and now we’ve learned classified documents kept in President Biden’s garage were found in December. There are many questions about why the Biden Administration kept this matter a secret from the public, who had access to the office and the residence, and what information is contained in these classified documents. Republicans will push for transparency, accountability, and answers for the American people.”

Comer is leading the House GOP’s investigations of the Biden administration. Yesterday, he demanded records from the Treasury related to the president’s son Hunter Biden and other family members, as well as the testimony of former Twitter executives involved in the response to the publication of stories related to Hunter’s laptop in 2020.

This is what George Santos’s days are like in the Capitol.

He walks out of his office to a mob of reporters all wanting to know the same thing: will he resign after admitting to making up big parts of his resume? Yesterday, he said, he would not, but today, he caused some confusion by saying he’d do so if 142 people requested it. ABC News caught the moment:

According to NBC News, he appeared later in the day on Trump confidante Steve Bannon’s podcast to clarify that he would resign at the request of the 142,000 people who voted for him in the Republican’s New York district.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy would consider releasing more surveillance footage from the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, despite the objections of police and the justice department, Politico reports.

“I think the American public should actually see all what happened instead of a report that’s written for a political basis,” the Republican House leader said at his press conference today.

Some footage has already been made public as part of court cases or the January 6 committee’s investigation, but much of the 14,000 hours of footage recorded by surveillance cameras that day remains held by Congress, Politico says. Both the justice department and Capitol police have objected to past efforts to release more of the video, saying it could help plan another attack.

There are now two special counsels investigating two American presidents – one current, one former – related to the discovery of classified documents in their possession. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe takes a look at what kind of trouble Joe Biden and Donald Trump could be in:

The discovery of documents from the Biden-Obama administration in at least two locations linked to Joe Biden has been greeted with dismay by Democrats and glee by Republicans, given the extensive legal troubles that Donald Trump faces for taking classified papers to his Florida resort.

Republicans believe the incident shows that Biden has committed the same transgression as the former president, and argue that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago and subsequent investigation were politically motivated point-scoring.

But Democrats insist the two incidents are different legally, while acknowledging that they present a political problem for Biden that allows Republicans to go on the offensive.

The Biden administration says it will cooperate with special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into the classified documents found at the president’s Delaware home and at a former office in Washington DC:

Special counsel Robert Hur has released a statement following his appointment by attorney general Merrick Garland.

“I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment. I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service,” Hur said.

Merrick Garland closed his speech with a few words of support for Robert Hur.

“I am confident that Mr Hur will carry out his responsibility in an even-handed and urgent matter, and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department,” he said.

He ignored a question from a reporter about whether he’d spoken with Biden about the investigation.

In his brief speech, Merrick Garland gave a timeline of how the document discovery unfolded behind the scenes.

He confirmed that last November, he ask John Lausch, the Trump-appointed US attorney for the northern district of Illinois, to look into whether the materials found in an office formerly used by Biden in Washington DC warranted the appointment of a special counsel.

The following month, a personal lawyer for Biden informed Lausch that more classified items were found in Biden’s garage at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, Garland said. These were turned over to the FBI. Garland also noted that Lausch was informed this morning by Biden’s attorney that another classified document was found at the president’s Wilmington home.

Last week, Lausch informed Garland that he believed the matter warranted such an appointment, but he was unable to fill the role himself. Garland chose Robert Hur, another Trump appointee who stepped down as US attorney for Maryland after Biden took office, for the role.

“I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity,” Garland said. “But under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter.”

Merrick Garland named the special counsel as Robert Hur, who served as US attorney for Maryland from 2018 to 2021.

He was nominated to that role by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.

Attorney general Merrick Garland has announced the appointment of a special counsel to handle the inquiry into classified documents found at Joe Biden’s properties.

Follow this blog for more.

Oliver Milman reports on a key issue occupying Washington this week…

Joe Biden has ruled out any ban of gas stoves in the US, following a furious backlash from Republicans to suggestions they could be phased out due to their contribution to indoor air pollution linked to childhood asthma and other conditions.

Biden “does not support banning gas stoves”, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday. Jean-Pierre added that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the federal agency responsible for consumer safety, “is not banning gas stoves. I just want to be very clear on that.”

The president’s intervention follows the possibility of a ban raised by Richard Trumka Jr, a CPSC commissioner, who called gas stoves a “hidden hazard” and said any option restricting their ongoing sale was “on the table”.

In December, Trumka said that “we need to be talking about regulating gas stoves, whether that’s drastically improving emissions or banning gas stoves entirely”.

Gas stoves have become a target for public health advocates, as well as climate campaigners, due to their leakage even when turned off of pollutants such as carbon monoxide and formaldehyde.

The biggest concern is over their emission of nitrogen dioxide, which can trigger cardiovascular problems and cause the inflammation of airways.

Read on…

Here’s a thought-provoking lunchtime, pre-DoJ presser read from Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, about Joe Biden’s classified-document problem, how it compares to Donald Trump’s retention of such papers and why the Espionage Act itself is the problem…

With Joe Biden now embroiled in his own classified documents controversy, partisan commentators will surely have a field day playing the tired old game of “no, you endangered national security.”

Instead, I’d like to focus on the real issues: the overly broad and often-abused Espionage Act and the massive, draconian secrecy system that does far more harm than good in the United States.

This should be yet another wake up call that both the classification system and the Espionage Act need a dramatic overhaul. The question is — as more secret documents are found at a second Biden location and Donald Trump’s special prosecutor continues to work — will anyone listen?

Now, before someone accuses me of “both side-ing” the separate Trump and Biden scandals here: no, they are not the same. Trump had mountains of secret documents he purposefully absconded with that he both refused to give back and arguably lied to authorities about. Whereas it seems Biden’s team actually alerted the authorities that the president had them in his office and is fully cooperating in their return.

But here’s the thing: that doesn’t mean Biden didn’t potentially violate the Espionage Act – at least according to some legal experts.

That’s because the Espionage Act is incredibly broad and spares no one.

Read on…

A growing number of Republicans are calling for George Santos to resign, though as yet party leaders have not moved against the newly elected congressman whose resumé has been shown to be largely fictional and whose campaign finances are the subject of formal complaints.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House, had stern words for Santos and Republican leaders when he spoke to reporters earlier:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He’s a complete and total fraud. He lied to the voters of the third congressional district in New York. He deceived and connived his way into Congress, and is now the responsibility of House Republicans to do something about it.

“This is not a partisan issue, but it is an issue that Republicans need to handle. Clean up your house. You can start with George Santos.”

Six New York Republicans have called for Santos to quit. Santos has said he will not.

Of a move earlier this week by two New York Democrats, Daniel Goldman and Ritchie Torres, to hand-deliver to Santos their request for an investigation of his campaign finances, Jeffries said: “I was well-aware of their decision to do so.

“But any matters before the ethics committee are before the ethics committee, and should be resolved by members of the ethics committee.”

Kevin McCarthy would seem – up to a point – to agree. The Republican House speaker told reporters today: “What I find is that voters have elected George Santos. If there is a concern he will go through ethics. If there is something that is found it will be dealt with in that manner. But they [voters] have a voice in this process.”

Read on:

Attorney general Merrick Garland has a public address planned for 1.15pm eastern time after a second batch of classified materials was found at Joe Biden’s house in Delaware. Garland may indirectly respond to calls from Republicans to appoint a special prosecutor to handle the matter, as he did for the government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Follow this blog for the latest from his press conference as it happens.

Here’s what else has happened so far today:

• The House Democratic leader has called on George Santos to resign for lying about his qualifications. Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the chamber’s ethics body will handle his case.

• Inflation is on the decline in the United States, according to government data released today.

• Hunter Biden has issues that are more significant than Democrats would like to admit, but may add up to less than Republicans believe, the New York Times reports.

The trial of five members of the Proud Boys militia group has started today in Washington DC, Politico reports. The group is facing seditious conspiracy charges related to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol:

In November, the founder of the Oath Keepers, another militia group involved in the insurrection, was found guilty of the same charge by a federal jury, along with a co-defendant.