OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate are demanding that Attorney General Merrick Garland appoint a special counsel after a second batch of classified documents were discovered at another location in Washington, D.C., by aides to President Joe Biden.
According to NBC News, which cited unnamed sources, aides to the president have been looking for additional classified materials that may have been located elsewhere besides a private office he used in the Penn Biden Center in the nation’s capital. Those documents were found in November, just a few days before the midterm elections, but the discovery of that initial batch was first reported this week.
News of the second discovery of documents left White House officials struggling to explain them, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre becoming frustrated with one reporter who pressed her for answers on Wednesday.
“Ed, we don’t need to have this,” Jean-Pierre told CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe, who she suggested was a media ally to the White House, per Newsmax. “We work very well together. We don’t need to have this kind of confrontation.
“You don’t need to be contentious with me here,” she added, the outlet reported.
The spokeswoman also would not answer questions from The Associated Press about when Biden was briefed on the initial and subsequent document discoveries, as O’Keefe asked if there was a link to the timing of the first discovery, on Nov. 2; the midterms were Nov. 8.
In any event, a wave of Republican lawmakers responded to the discoveries with calls for the Justice Department to step up an investigation.
“Special counsel,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tweeted in response to the latest news.
“We all know why it was kept secret — right before the midterms — that Joe Biden kept classified documents at his Chinese-funded ‘think tank,'” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., tweeted on Tuesday.
We all know why it was kept secret—right before the midterms—that Joe Biden kept classified documents at his Chinese-funded "think tank."
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) January 10, 2023
Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, demanded after the second batch news, “Attorney General Merrick Garland must appoint a special counsel.”
BREAKING: Biden aides found another batch of classified documents in a new location.
Attorney General Merrick Garland must appoint a special counsel.
— Congressman Troy Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) January 11, 2023
Previously, Garland assigned a special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump after an unprecedented FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in early July turned up classified documents that he said he personally declassified before leaving office.
Biden, on the other hand, served as Barack Obama’s vice president, and Trump noted in a post to his Truth Social platform that VPs do not have the authority to declassify documents on their own.
“Biden’s documents are HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL, many pertain to UKRAINE, where Hunter was ‘raking in the dough,’ and FUNDED BY CHINA, which gave $55 Million to Biden, through Penn, and probably had easy access,” Trump posted Wednesday.
“Karl Rove was, as usual, wrong when he stated that then V.P. Biden’s HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL papers, which were in his office for many years, were in any way similar to the Secret Service guarded, & otherwise very secure, Mar-a-Lago papers,” he added.
“Biden was not then President, had no power to declassify, & came under the very tough Federal Records Act. I come under the much more generous Presidential Records Act, was having productive discussions with Radical Left NARA, & did everything right. A giant scam,” he noted further.
“Look how President Trump was treated when it came to so-called ‘classified’ documents at his home,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the new chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, tweeted Wednesday before news of the second batch. “Now look at how President Biden is being treated for having classified documents at the Biden Center.”
In an appearance Wednesday night on Newsmax, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said the discovery of classified documents in Biden’s possession put his administration “not a very fair place” for the “administration of justice.”
“There’s a double standard when it comes to how to deal with conservatives and liberals under this administration,” Graham told Van Susteren. “It needs to stop.
“The media is complicit; social media companies need to be regulated – you know, they’re they’re an extension of the Democratic Party in many ways. So, no, America is not a very fair place now when it comes to administration of the law,” he added.
