The Justice Department largely rejected House GOP requests for information about the classified documents scandal surrounding President Joe Biden, citing Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing a special counsel.
Carlos Felipe Uriarte, the assistant attorney general for DOJ’s office of legislative affairs, sent a Monday letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), pointing to Garland’s Jan. 12 selection of special counsel Robert Hur to investigate Biden’s apparent mishandling of classified information as the key reason why the DOJ was limiting its sharing of information on the Biden saga.
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Jordan had fired off a letter to Garland on Jan. 13 demanding all documents and communications between the DOJ, the FBI, and the Executive Office of the President about Biden’s classified documents, but the DOJ response back largely denied the Ohio Republican’s information requests.
“Your letter … requests non-public information that is central to the ongoing Special Counsel investigation,” the assistant attorney general told Jordan on Monday. “The Department’s longstanding policy is to maintain the confidentiality of such information regarding open matters. This policy protects the American people’s interest in the evenhanded, dispassionate, and effective administration of justice. Disclosing non-public information about ongoing investigations could violate statutory requirements or court orders, reveal road maps of our investigations, and interfere with the Department’s ability to gather facts, interview witnesses, and bring criminal prosecutions where warranted.”
Jordan's office quickly responded.
"Our Members are rightly concerned about the Justice Department's double standard here. After all, some of the Biden documents were found at a think tank that has received funds from communist China," Jordan spokesman Russell Dye told the Washington Examiner. "It's concerning, to say the least, that the Department is more interested in playing politics than cooperating."
Biden’s personal attorneys said they first discovered classified documents in early November at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. The president’s lawyers have since found more classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home in December and January, and the DOJ found more when it conducted its own search earlier this month.
Jordan’s letter, co-signed by another top GOP member of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), also demanded Garland hand over details about the appointment of DOJ veteran and former Trump federal prosecutor Robert Hur to be special counsel.
“We are conducting oversight of the Justice Department's actions with respect to former Vice President Biden's mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C. private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware residence,” the House Republicans told Garland in the mid-January letter.
Garland had appointed Kosovo war crimes prosecutor Jack Smith late last year to take over the Justice Department’s investigation of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. The Biden attorney general then selected Hur to be special counsel in the Biden documents saga in January.
House Republicans told Garland that “the circumstances of this appointment raise fundamental oversight questions that the Committee routinely examines” and that “we expect your complete cooperation with our inquiry.”
“It is unclear when the Department first came to learn about the existence of these documents, and whether it actively concealed this information from the public on the eve of the 2022 elections," the GOP letter read. "It is also unclear what interactions, if any, the Department had with President Biden or his representatives about his mishandling of classified material. The Department’s actions here appear to depart from how it acted in similar circumstances.”
The Republicans asked for all records related to the selection of U.S. Attorney John Lausch to do the initial investigation and related to the choice of Hur as special counsel. The GOP investigators also asked for all documents between or among the DOJ, the FBI, and the White House related to classified records found at the Penn Biden Center and at Biden’s home. The letter also told Garland to hand over all communications between the DOJ and Biden’s lawyers related to the classified documents saga.
Jordan and Johnson also told the Justice Department to provide all of the documents and communications related to the storage of the classified records at Biden’s office and his home, as well as all records tied to the discovery of the documents with classified markings.
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Uriarte insisted Monday that “in connection with appointing a Special Counsel, the Attorney General has provided significant information about how the matter came into the Department, the steps the Department took to investigate, and his appointment decision.”
“Disclosures to Congress about active investigations risk jeopardizing those investigations and creating the appearance that Congress may be exerting improper political pressure or attempting to influence Department decisions in certain cases,” the DOJ official said, adding, “The Special Counsel regulations establish procedures for disclosing certain information to Congress at the onset and conclusion of a Special Counsel investigation.”
The White House, the National Archives, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines have all pointed to the appointment of special counsels in the Trump and Biden sagas as reasons for missing deadlines or deflecting questions, and the DOJ has now confirmed its special counsel justification for delays in info sharing.
Uriarte sent a similar letter on Saturday to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) and its Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL), citing Garland’s appointments of Smith and Hur as a reason why DOJ was limiting the intelligence community’s sharing of information on these matters.