Special counsel Robert Hur trying to interview Biden in classified docs probe: report
Federal investigators are negotiating ground rules for an interview of President Biden as part of their months-long inquiry into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Special counsel Robert Hur’s office and attorneys for the president have been in talks for the last month about a potential sit-down, signaling the eight-month investigation may be nearing its end, NBC News reported Friday.
Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, and White House spokesman Ian Sams did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Hur’s office declined to comment.
Biden, 80, retained an unknown number of classified documents from his days as vice president and a US senator, some of which were kept in the garage at his Wilmington, Del., mansion and handed over to federal authorities in January.
“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” the president told reporters at the time. “We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department.”
Biden added that he was “fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly” because he said investigators were “going to find there’s nothing there.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur to look into the matter Jan. 12, and FBI agents later seized other materials from the Wilmington home, including several notebooks that may contain sensitive intelligence information.
The president’s attorneys had previously turned over classified information they found in November of last year at Biden’s former office, the Penn Biden Center, in Washington.
Around the same time, Garland asked special counsel Jack Smith to oversee a separate inquiry into former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Smith indicted Trump, 77, in June on 37 counts of keeping sensitive national security papers at the Palm Beach, Fla., resort and then lying to federal authorities who sought them. A superseding indictment filed last month hit the 45th president with three additional counts of allegedly asking his property manager to delete security camera footage of attempts to hide boxes containing the documents.
The FBI seized roughly 300 documents at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022 after Trump failed to turn over the materials to the National Archives.
The documents had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury and were sought by the president’s attorneys.
However, prosecutors say Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, concealed the papers in various rooms at the resort rather than give them up.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Former Vice President Mike Pence similarly handed over two boxes of classified materials to the FBI in January, but agents later searched his Indiana home and found another document.
Investigators have since cleared Pence of any wrongdoing.
