Joe Biden in a tricky position.

US Justice Minister Merrick Garland on Thursday (January 12th) appointed an independent prosecutor to investigate confidential documents found in a former office and in the private residence of the President of the United States.

“I signed a document appointing Robert Hur as a special prosecutor” which “authorizes him to investigate any person or entity who may have violated the law” in this case, he said during a short speech.

This decision is "in the public interest" and was necessary due to the "extraordinary circumstances", he added.

"This appointment reminds the public of the Ministry's commitment to the independence of the judiciary in particularly sensitive cases, and its commitment to making decisions guided solely by the facts and the law," he continued.

Robert Hur is currently a partner in a law firm in Washington.

This graduate of Stanford and Harvard universities was previously a federal prosecutor in Maryland from 2018 to 2021. He had been appointed to this position by Donald Trump.

From 2007 to 2014, when he was an assistant federal prosecutor in the District of Maryland, he, according to the Department of Justice, worked on cases related to gang violence, firearms offenses, drug trafficking as well as fraud in financial institutions and corruption.

Ongoing investigation against Donald Trump

Following the discovery of a dozen confidential documents in a former office of Joe Biden in Washington, his lawyers inspected his two private residences, where archives "could have been transferred during the transition of 2017", explained in a press release the lawyer of the presidency, Richard Sauber.

They found "a small number of additional documents dating from the Obama-Biden administration and classified as confidential," which were in the garage of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and in an adjoining room, he said. .

No documents were found at his residence in the seaside town of Rehoboth, in this east coast state, added Richard Sauber, noting that the Department of Justice was immediately notified to take possession of the files.

The revelations are embarrassing for the Democratic president, with authorities investigating his Republican predecessor Donald Trump's handling of his own presidential archives for months.

>> To read also: Search at Donald Trump: what the former American president risks

The federal police had carried out a spectacular search in August of the private club in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, where the billionaire has lived since his departure from the White House.

The FBI had seized thousands of documents, including a hundred classified defense secrets.

A 1978 law obliges American presidents and vice-presidents to transmit all their e-mails, letters and other working documents to the National Archives.

With AFP

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