Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a Justice Department special counsel to look into how classified documents ended up at President Joe Biden’s nonprofit think-tank and even his home, setting up a tricky political situation that threatens to muddy up the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s mishandling of national security secrets.
At a brief press conference on Thursday, during which he refused to answer any questions, Garland said “extraordinary circumstances here” justify the use of a special investigator who operates with slightly more independence than a typical federal prosecutor.
Garland gave the politically-fraught job to Robert Kyoung Hur, who served as the top federal prosecutor in Maryland for much of the Trump administration and is now in private practice in Washington, D.C. He co-chairs the “crisis management” group at the firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
