Washington — Attorney General Merrick Garland will make a statement from the Justice Department on Thursday, the department said.
Garland will speak at 1:15 p.m. The Justice Department didn’t provide the topic of his remarks.
His scheduled statement comes as President Biden is under scrutiny after roughly 10 documents with classification markings were discovered in his vice-presidential office at a think tank in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 2.
The records discovered at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement were immediately turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Justice Department was notified, according to the special counsel to the president, Richard Sauber.
Garland asked the U.S. attorney in Chicago, John Lausch, to review the documents and examine how they ended up at the think tank. Lausch was appointed to the post by former President Donald Trump.
Sauber said in a statement Thursday that after the initial discovery, Mr. Biden’s lawyers searched his residences in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and found a second, “small number” of documents marked classified from the Obama administration in a storage space in the garage at his Wilmington home. No documents were found at the Rehoboth Beach property, Sauber said.
The Department of Justice was notified upon discovery of the records, and Mr. Biden’s lawyers arranged for the department to take the documents, he added.
Republicans have seized upon the discovery of the documents as evidence of unfair treatment by federal investigators toward Trump, who is under Justice Department investigation for his handling of sensitive government records he brought with him to his South Florida residence from the White House at the end of his presidency.
Garland appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take over the probe involving Trump and the alleged improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records.
