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      Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester Enters Delaware Senate Race

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      Lisa Blunt Rochester, the handpicked successor to retiring Senator Thomas R. Carper, would be the third Black woman in history to win a Senate seat.Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat, announced her campaign on Wednesday for the Delaware Senate seat being vacated by Senator Thomas R. Carper, beginning as the favorite in a race that could make her the third Black woman in U.S. history to win election to the Senate.Ms. Blunt Rochester, 61, a close ally of President Biden’s, made a 3.5-minute biographical video that focuses on her faith, how she overcame the untimely death of her husband and her experience during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when she prayed while trapped in the House balcony as rioters laid siege to the building.“The run for the Senate for me is also about protecting our democracy, and that includes voting rights, and also for protecting our freedoms, like reproductive rights,” Ms. Blunt Rochester said in an interview.Ms. Blunt Rochester is the only House member in Delaware, a deep-blue state in which the winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored to win the general election. Powerful Democrats, including Mr. Carper, for whom Ms. Blunt Rochester once interned, and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, have indicated support for her candidacy. Mr. Carper said he would do everything in his power to ensure that she won.If elected, Ms. Blunt Rochester, who previously served as Delaware’s labor secretary, deputy secretary of health and social services, and state personnel director, would be the state’s first female senator and first Black senator.She said her first priority would be to push for passage of voting rights legislation, and advocate for eliminating the legislative filibuster to make that possible.During her four terms in the House, Mr. Biden has counted on Ms. Blunt Rochester as a close adviser. She was national co-chairwoman of Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign and is known to keep the president abreast of happenings on Capitol Hill.“When he would call me, he was getting a real broad lay of the land of what’s happening in the House,” she said of Mr. Biden.Ms. Blunt Rochester is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues and both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the more centrist New Democrat Coalition. She has also served in leadership.She said she felt she had the president’s encouragement to run.“It was more us having a conversation about making sure that there was representation in the Senate,” she recalled. “He didn’t say, ‘Hey, Lisa, you should run for Senate.’ He said, ‘Lisa, whatever you decide to do, I think you would be great at it.’”Shortly after Mr. Carper announced his retirement, Mr. Schumer spoke by phone with Ms. Blunt Rochester and told her he believed that she could be a very good senator, according to an aide to the top Democrat.“It was just a very encouraging call, just saying he was looking forward to having a longer and deeper conversation with me, but that he was very excited about the potential of me running,” Ms. Blunt Rochester said. More

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      Carper Says He Will Retire, Vacating Seat in Solidly Democratic Delaware

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      The fourth-term senator said he would do everything he could to ensure that Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, the state’s lone congresswoman and his former intern, won the race to succeed him.Senator Thomas R. Carper, a veteran Democrat from Delaware, announced on Monday that he would not seek re-election next year, opening up a seat in a deep-blue state that he said he hoped would go to his handpicked successor.Mr. Carper, 76, is in his fourth term in the Senate and is the last surviving Vietnam veteran to serve there. He has held public office since the 1970s, first as Delaware’s treasurer, then for a decade as a congressman, then as governor and, since 2001, as a senator.“This just seems like a good time just to turn the page and move on,” Mr. Carper said at a news conference in Wilmington, Del. He added, “I’ve got miles to go, and I’m going to make every day count.”The senator said he intended to do all he could to help Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, the Democrat who serves as the state’s only member of the House and was his former intern, win the race to succeed him.As the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Mr. Carper said he planned to spend his final months in Congress overseeing the clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act and key projects included in the bipartisan infrastructure legislation.“I’ll continue working 60-hour weeks,” he said.Mr. Carper said he also planned to help his friend President Biden succeed and win re-election, brushing aside questions about the president’s age.“Every meeting I’ve been a part of, he’s actually sharper than the rest of us,” Mr. Carper said.He said he had called Ms. Blunt Rochester on Monday morning and told her, “You’ve been patient waiting for me to get out of the way, and I’m going to get out of the way.”He added that he also told her: “I hope you run, and I hope you’ll let me support you in that mission.”And Mr. Carper said Ms. Blunt Rochester replied, “Yes, I’ll let you support me.”Ms. Blunt Rochester, who is also in her fourth term, has not yet announced a campaign but has publicly expressed interest in running. In a statement, she praised Mr. Carper as a lawmaker who was “more interested in attending a local Sunday service than doing the Sunday shows, more interested in hearing from his constituents in person than getting clicks online and more interested in the happenings of the day in Delaware than D.C.”Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, spoke by phone with Ms. Blunt Rochester shortly after hearing of Mr. Carper’s decision and told her he “believes she could be a really good senator and he looks forward to sitting down with her soon,” according to Mr. Schumer’s spokesman.In a separate statement, Mr. Schumer praised Mr. Carper as a “conscientious, hardworking, honorable and effective senator who has done so much for his beloved Delaware and America, particularly in protecting our precious environment and strengthening our transportation systems.”Mr. Schumer credited Mr. Carper for spearheading important legislation such as postal reform and reducing the effects of methane in the atmosphere.Senator Chris Coons, also a Democrat from Delaware, said Mr. Carper relied on his background as a former governor during his time in the Senate.“Tom Carper has also mentored a generation of Delaware leaders,” Mr. Coons said. “From my first race for County Council president, he has encouraged and supported my career in service, acting as a source of advice and encouragement when I needed it most, and as a role model for balancing family and service.” More

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      Why Fox News Had to Settle With Dominion

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      WILMINGTON, Del. — It is deeply disappointing that Fox News settled the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems before Rupert Murdoch and his roster of celebrity propagandists had to testify. But it is not surprising. Fox News, after all, had no viable defense.On Tuesday, I arrived at Superior Court here at 7 a.m. to secure a seat for what I, like many others, hoped would be an epic trial about the falsehoods Fox aired after the 2020 election, when it accused Dominion and the voting technology company Smartmatic of perpetrating heinous voter fraud. Jury selection took all morning, and opening statements were scheduled for the afternoon.More than anything, I was curious about what Fox’s lawyers would say, because there seemed so little that they could say. Part of Fox’s sinister on-air brilliance is the way it encases its audience in a comprehensive alternative reality. But now, for once, the network would be forced to account for itself outside the right-wing bubble. How it would possibly do so was a matter of great suspense.Already, Eric Davis, the judge in the case, had ruled in Dominion’s favor on key issues. “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” he wrote in a March 31 pretrial decision, a rare judicial use of all-caps bold italics. Fox’s statements, he ruled, constituted “defamation per se.”Davis prohibited Fox from arguing that the network was merely reporting on allegations made by Donald Trump and his lawyers, which Fox contended were newsworthy whether or not they were true. So the case would turn not on whether Fox had aired defamatory falsehoods, which Davis determined it had, but on whether, in airing defamatory falsehoods, Fox had displayed “actual malice” — essentially, reckless disregard for the truth.The evidence for such reckless disregard brought to light by Dominion’s lawyers during the discovery phase of the case was already overwhelming, and the trial promised more to come. A filing that Fox’s lawyers made last week demonstrated their predicament. In it, the attorneys laid out some of the points they planned to make in their opening argument, asking for “guidance from the court to ensure that it can make its opening statement without undue interruption and delay.” Those points looked a lot like an attempt by Fox to use a legal backdoor to smuggle in arguments that the judge had already forbidden.“To defend this case, Fox witnesses must be able to testify about the reasons why Fox covered the allegations on the air,” said the filing. “Fox witnesses will all testify that they covered the Dominion-related allegations because the allegations were part of the most newsworthy story of the day.” This, even though Davis had specifically ruled that this argument was invalid because, among other things, “the evidence does not support” the contention that Fox “conducted good-faith, disinterested reporting.”In order to defend Fox from a finding of actual malice, its lawyers seemed set on bringing Fox’s alternative reality into the courtroom, acting as if taking Trump and his attorneys at their word was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Testimony and documentary evidence, Fox’s lawyers said in the filing, “will show that the president and the lawyers bringing the election fraud lawsuits continuously told Fox that they had evidence to support their claims and that they would be presenting that evidence to courts.” That, in turn, explains why the Fox hosts “did not know that the president’s allegations were false or harbor serious doubts about the truth of the allegations.”In other words, they can’t be blamed for treating the president of the United States as a reliable source.Responding to the filing, Davis refused to give Fox the green light it sought. If the network’s lawyers wanted to make the arguments that they were telegraphing, they would have to take their chances in front of the jury, and risk getting shut down. On Tuesday morning, Davis reminded the parties that they would not be able to make arguments “about things that I’ve ruled inadmissible.” I was waiting to hear what Fox’s lawyers were going to argue instead.But after lunch, the jury didn’t return, and Davis came back to the courtroom only briefly before beckoning some of the lawyers out. The hours ticked by while the journalist-filled audience grew increasingly restless. Courtroom protocol against texting or using the internet gradually collapsed. News broke that the judge had ordered a special master to investigate whether Fox had “complied with their discovery obligations.” (The network had previously been sanctioned for withholding evidence.) Rumors about a settlement buzzed through the room.At 4 p.m., the jury filed back in, and the judge confirmed that the trial was over before it began.Fox is paying Dominion $787.5 million, which appears to be one of the largest defamation settlements in history and is one that constitutes a humiliating admission of fault by the network, even though, as The New York Times’s Jim Rutenberg reported, the deal doesn’t require Fox to apologize. But the public will be deprived of seeing Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and several of their colleagues grilled on the stand, forced to reckon with the real world, unable to fall back on the dense lattice of misinformation that typically sustains Fox’s narratives.At least, the public will be deprived for now. Smartmatic is still suing Fox for $2.7 billion, though no trial date has been announced yet. “Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign,” Smartmatic lawyer J. Erik Connolly said in a statement on Tuesday. “Smartmatic will expose the rest.”I’m not sure I believe it — Fox has just shown the world what it’s willing to pay to avoid the unmasking. But reality isn’t done with Murdoch and the rest of them yet.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Judge Limits Fox’s Options for Defense in Dominion Trial

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      A Delaware judge said Fox News could not argue newsworthiness to defend airing false claims, and limited how Dominion Voting Systems could refer to the Jan. 6 attack.WILMINGTON, Del. — A judge ruled on Tuesday that Fox News could not argue that it broadcast false information about Dominion Voting Systems on the basis that the allegations were newsworthy, limiting a key line of defense for the network as it faces the beginning of a potentially costly defamation trial next week.The judge, Eric M. Davis of Delaware Superior Court, also ruled that Dominion could not refer to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol except in very narrow circumstances, saying he did not want jurors to be prejudiced by events that weren’t relevant to the central question in the case: Did Fox air wild claims about Dominion’s purported involvement in a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald J. Trump knowing that they were lies?In the first of two days of pretrial hearings, Judge Davis set many of the parameters that will govern how the trial is run, including what kinds of arguments the 12-person jury can hear and what questions lawyers may ask during jury selection to weed out those they believe would not be impartial.The hearing covered matters large and seemingly small, from the application of the First Amendment to how jurors may take notes.Judge Davis said he would allow lawyers to ask potential jurors about their cable news viewing habits and whether they watched Fox News programs — or intentionally avoided them. He will not, however, permit questions about how someone voted.In another ruling, the judge denied a motion from Dominion that sought to limit how Fox lawyers could invoke the First Amendment, leaving the network with some space to argue that the Constitution shields it from liability.The lawsuit, in which Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages, is teeing up a major test of the First Amendment and, depending on the outcome, could renew questions about whether defamation law adequately protects victims of misinformation campaigns.While legal experts have said Dominion’s case is unusually strong, defamation suits are extremely difficult to win because the law essentially requires proof of the defendants’ state of mind. Dominion’s burden will be to convince a jury that people inside Fox acted with actual malice, meaning either that they knew the allegations they broadcast were false but did so anyway, or that they acted so recklessly they overlooked facts that would have proved them wrong.Fox has argued that while it understood many of the claims made by its guests about Dominion were false, they were still worth covering as inherently newsworthy. Fox’s lawyers have taken the position that there is nothing more newsworthy than claims by a former president of the United States that an election wasn’t credible.Judge Eric M. Davis said he would allow lawyers to ask potential jurors about their cable news viewing habits and whether they watched Fox News programs.John Taggart for The New York TimesBut Judge Davis disagreed.“Just because someone is newsworthy doesn’t mean you can defame someone,” he said, referring to pro-Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who appeared repeatedly on Fox News and Fox Business in the weeks after the 2020 election and linked Dominion to various conspiracy theories.The judge admonished Fox’s lawyers, saying they cannot make the argument that the false statements about Dominion came from guests like Ms. Powell and not from Fox hosts. That argument is irrelevant, he said, because the fact remains that Fox is responsible as the broadcaster.Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani. The pro-Trump lawyers appeared repeatedly on Fox News and Fox Business in the weeks after the 2020 election and linked Dominion to various conspiracy theories.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press“It’s a publication issue, not a who-said-it issue,” he said.Dan K. Webb, a lawyer representing Fox, explained that hosts would testify that they weren’t certain about the truth of the allegations but covered them because the former president and his lawyers said they could prove them.“The hosts will say during that time period, 15, 20 days, they were careful not to repeat the allegation,” Mr. Webb said.Judge Davis responded, “Just because they say it, doesn’t mean it’s true.”It was not the only tense exchange between the judge and Fox lawyers on Tuesday. At one point, a lawyer for Dominion, Justin Nelson, informed Judge Davis that Fox had disclosed only within the last 48 hours that Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls the Fox media empire, had a larger role in Fox News than the company had initially let on.By not acknowledging the extent of Mr. Murdoch’s responsibility for Fox News, the personal communications of his that Dominion could review were “significantly more limited,” Mr. Nelson said.Judge Davis was not pleased. “This is a problem,” he said. “I need to feel comfortable that when you represent something to me that it’s true,” he added.Fox has also made the argument that its actions were not defamatory because many hosts and guests said on the air that there was a lack of convincing evidence that suggested widespread voter fraud.Judge Davis rejected this position, too.“You can’t absolve yourself of defamation by merely putting somebody on at another time to say something different,” he said.In asking for such a large settlement against Fox, Dominion has cited the death threats its employees have received. People have shown up outside its Denver headquarters armed and left voice mail messages threatening to blow up its offices.Judge Davis on Tuesday limited how Dominion can refer to those threats in front of jurors, ruling that it may not mention specific content. He said he did not want to leave jurors with the impression that Fox was responsible for the actions of third parties.The trial begins on Monday, with jury selection expected to wrap up by the end of this week.Before Tuesday, the judge had already ruled that Dominion could compel several high-profile Fox executives and hosts to testify in person, including Mr. Murdoch; Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media; and the Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro. More

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      Fox News and Dominion face off in court over 2020 election claims

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      Attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News will return to court on Wednesday for the second day of a pre-trial hearing previewing many arguments in a closely watched $1.6bn defamation case.Dominion is suing the rightwing network over its decision to repeatedly air false claims about its voting equipment in 2020 as Donald Trump and allies tried to overturn the election.Both sides are asking Eric Davis, a Delaware superior court judge, to rule in their favor ahead of trial.Davis said on Tuesday he had not reached a decision. His ruling will probably set out the scope of issues for a trial scheduled for mid-April.On Tuesday, Justin Nelson, a Dominion lawyer, presented a slew of internal communications from Fox News showing hosts, producers and executives all knew the claims about Dominion were false.That evidence is in service of Dominion’s effort to prove that Fox News committed “actual malice” when it knew the statements were false or recklessly disregarded the truth when it published claims about Dominion.On Wednesday, the hearing will feature the remainder of an argument from Erin Murphy, presenting Fox News’s case to the court.Much of her argument on Tuesday focused on the idea that Fox News was not presenting facts to its audience, but rather what reasonable viewers would have understood to be allegations from Donald Trump and his lawyers.She is expected to focus on why Fox News’s actions did not meet the “actual malice” standard required to prove defamation.Davis peppered both sides with questions on Tuesday and at times seemed skeptical of some of Fox News’s arguments.Part of its argument in the case is that it cannot be held liable for defamation because it was reporting newsworthy events in a neutral and dispassionate way.Davis questioned whether Fox News’s reporting was neutral and dispassionate, pressing Murphy about tweets from the host Lou Dobbs that contained the hashtags “Maga” and “America First”.Abby Grossberg, a Fox News staffer, separately sued the network this week, saying she was coerced by attorneys into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit. More

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      Fox and Dominion Urge Judge to Rule on Case

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      At the start of a pretrial hearing for the $1.6 billion defamation trial, the judge said he was still weighing whether to issue a summary judgment.A Delaware judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News said in a pretrial hearing on Tuesday that he was still weighing whether to issue a summary judgment for either side in the case.In a hearing in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday, lawyers for Fox News and Dominion both pushed the judge, Eric M. Davis of the Delaware Superior Court, to rule on the case without a jury. Dominion, an election technology company, is accusing Fox of spreading false claims of widespread vote-rigging in the 2020 presidential election.“I haven’t made a decision,” Judge Davis said.The case centers on Fox’s coverage of the 2020 election, when President Donald J. Trump and his supporters began to spread false claims about widespread voter fraud.On Tuesday, Dominion argued that a trove of internal communications and depositions it had obtained showed that Fox executives and hosts had known that some of the claims about election fraud were false but had given them airtime anyway. Fox asked Judge Davis to dismiss the case outright, saying its actions were protected by the First Amendment.A trial is scheduled to begin on April 17.The lawsuit poses a sizable threat to Fox’s business and reputation. Dominion must prove that Fox knowingly broadcast false information about the company, or was reckless enough to disregard substantial evidence that the claims were not true — a legal standard known as “actual malice.” While defamation cases have traditionally proved hard to win, legal experts say Dominion may have enough evidence to clear that high bar.Justin Nelson, a lawyer for Dominion, told the court that it had plenty of evidence that Fox knew what it was doing.Mr. Nelson cited, for example, an excerpt from a deposition by Joe Dorrego, the chief financial officer of Fox News, who was asked whether Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the top executives of Fox News’s parent company, knew that the claims were being aired on the network. Mr. Dorrego answered: “They were certainly aware that the allegations were being reported on Fox News.”“They allowed people to come on the air to make those charges, despite knowing they are false,” Mr. Nelson told the judge.Erin Murphy, a lawyer for Fox, argued in court on Tuesday that a reasonable viewer of Fox News and Fox Business would have understood that the hosts were merely reporting that the president and his lawyers were making the fraud claims, which was newsworthy, and not making factual statements.“We do not think that we are just scot-free simply because a guest said something rather than a host,” Ms. Murphy said. “What we resist is that Dominion’s position seems to be that we are automatically liable because a guest said something.”Ms. Murphy told the judge that there was more context for the shows and statements singled out by Dominion in its complaint that proved the hosts had been merely presenting statements of fact. As an example, she referred to a Dec. 12, 2020, broadcast of “Fox & Friends,” during which the hosts asked Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, about legal challenges relating to voter fraud.“I don’t see how somebody watching that show thinks that by merely asking the president’s lawyer ‘What are you alleging and what evidence do you have to support it?’ the hosts are saying we believe these allegations to be true,” Ms. Murphy said.Ms. Murphy added that there was no evidence that any Fox Corporation executive had been involved in the airing of defamatory statements.Lawyers for Fox are scheduled to finish their arguments before the judge on Wednesday. More

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      FBI searched University of Delaware in Biden documents investigation

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      FBI searched University of Delaware in Biden documents investigationThe justice department is looking into how classified documents came to be found in Joe Biden’s home and former office The FBI searched the University of Delaware in recent weeks for classified documents as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of sensitive government records by Joe Biden.The search, first reported by CNN, was confirmed to the Associated Press by a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The person would not say whether anything was found.Why prosecutors might get Trump – and not Biden – for classified documentsRead moreA justice department special counsel is investigating how classified documents from Biden’s time as vice-president and senator came to end up in his home and former office – and whether any mishandling involved criminal intent or was unintentional. Biden’s personal lawyers disclosed in January that a small batch of documents with classified markings had been found weeks earlier in his former Washington office, and they have since allowed FBI searches of multiple properties.The university is Biden’s alma mater. In 2011, Biden donated his records from his 36 years serving in the US Senate to the school. The documents arrived on 6 June 2012, according to the university, which released photos of the numbered boxes being unloaded at the university alongside blue and gold balloons.Under the terms of Biden’s gift, the records are to remain sealed until two years after he retires from public life.Biden’s Senate records would not be covered by the Presidential Records Act, though prohibitions on mishandling classified information would still apply.The White House referred questions to the justice department, which declined to comment. The University of Delaware also referred questions to the justice department.The university is the fourth known entity to be searched by the FBI following inspections of Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington DC, where records with classified markings were initially found in a locked closet by Biden’s personal lawyers in November, and more recently of his Delaware homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach.Those searches were all done voluntarily and with the consent of Biden’s legal team.The FBI took six items that contained documents with classified markings during its January search of the Wilmington home, Biden’s personal lawyer said. Agents did not find classified documents at the Rehoboth Beach property but did take some handwritten notes and other materials relating to Biden’s time as vice-president for review.The justice department is separately investigating the retention by former president Donald Trump of roughly 300 documents marked as classified at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. The FBI served a search warrant at the home last August after months of resistance by Trump and his representatives to returning the documents to the government.The FBI also searched the Indiana home of former vice-president Mike Pence last week after his lawyers came forward to say they had found a small number of documents with classified markings. A Pence adviser said one additional document with classified markings was found during that search.TopicsJoe BidenFBIUS politicsDelawareBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump appointee named special counsel in Biden papers investigation

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      Trump appointee named special counsel in Biden papers investigationRobert Hur chosen by US attorney general after classified materials discovered in Delaware and Washington 02:47The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed a special counsel on Thursday to investigate Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents from his time as vice-president.The documents were discovered to have been stored in his garage at his home in Delaware and in office space in Washington DC.White House confirms second set of classified documents found at Biden Delaware property – liveRead moreThe move to name Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed federal prosecutor and former top justice department official, was a rapid decision from Garland to insulate the department from possible accusations of political conflicts or interference.Hur will be responsible for investigating the potential unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents at Biden’s home and his former thinktank, and will have the authority to prosecute any crimes resulting from the investigation, the order signed by Garland said.“I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial and dispassionate judgement. 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 in a statement released by the justice department.The decision to appoint a special counsel comes at a fraught moment for Garland, who only just named Jack Smith in November to serve as special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s unauthorized retention of national security material and his role in the January 6 Capitol attack.Speaking at justice department headquarters in Washington, Garland said “extraordinary circumstances” – namely that the president, to whom he and the department reports, could yet become ensnared in the investigation – necessitated an independent prosecutor to oversee the inquiry.The announcement comes amid growing scrutiny of whether Biden was involved in taking the documents to either his Delaware home or the office space at the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center for Diplomacy in Washington, where he was an honorary professor until 2019.Special counsels are prosecutors with more independence than other federal prosecutors, who can be installed for high-profile investigations when there are conflicts of interest or the appearance of such conflicts, though they ultimately answer to the attorney general.The Biden special counsel will examine approximately 10 classified documents found at the thinkthank, which included US intelligence memos and some materials marked as Top Secret/Secret Compartmented Information, and an unconfirmed additional number of classified documents that were in the garage and a storage space nearby.02:47From the information released so far, there are major differences between the Biden case and that involving Trump, who retained hundreds of classified documents and only partially complied with a grand jury subpoena that led to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last August.By contrast, Biden and his lawyers proactively returned the classified documents dating back to the Obama administration when he was vice-president to the government as soon as they were discovered. Biden was also not responding to a grand jury subpoena.Biden’s personal lawyers found the first set of documents at the Penn Biden Center on 2 November and alerted the National Archives and the justice department. The archives then issued a formal referral, leading Garland to task the Trump-appointed US attorney John Lausch to conduct a review.Biden’s lawyers then found additional classified documents in Delaware on 20 December. On 5 January, Lausch recommended that Garland appoint a special counsel to conduct an investigation. Lausch added it could not be him, since he was due to return to private practice, according to a source familiar with the matter.The revelation about the new documents came hours after the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the White House was committed to handling the matter in the “right way”, pointing to Biden’s personal attorneys’ immediate notification of the National Archives.“As my colleagues in the counsel have stated and said to all of you yesterday, this is an ongoing process under the review of the Department of Justice. So we are going to be limited on what we can say here,” Jean-Pierre said.Before the special counsel appointment, Biden told reporters: “I’m going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon. People know I take classified documents and classified material seriously. I also said we’re cooperating fully and completely with the justice department’s review.”The top Republican on the House intelligence committee has since requested that the US intelligence community conduct a “damage assessment” to assess the impact of their storage in an unauthorized location.In a statement on his Truth Social platform shortly before Garland spoke on Thursday, Trump said Garland should “immediately end special counsel investigation into anything related to me because I did everything right, and appoint a special counsel to investigate Joe Biden who hates Biden as much as Jack Smith hates me”.According to a justice department biography, Hur’s prosecutorial career has included cases including gang violence, drug trafficking and domestic terrorism, as well as white-collar crime such as fraud, tax offenses, intellectual property theft and public corruption.Hur graduated from Harvard College and received his law degree from Stanford. He clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist before working for the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, when he ran the justice department’s criminal division during the George W Bush administration.Most recently, he was a partner at the highly esteemed law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher after he left the justice department at the end of the Trump administration, where he served as the principal associate deputy attorney general, the top adviser role to the deputy attorney general.TopicsJoe BidenDelawareUS politicsnewsReuse this content More