Attorney General Merrick Garland has asked the US attorney in Chicago to review the matter, a source familiar with the matter previously told CNN, a process that is still in a preliminary stage.
That US attorney, John Lausch Jr., has already completed the initial part of his inquiry, a source familiar with his work told CNN. He has provided his preliminary findings to Garland, the source said.
That means Garland now faces a critical decision on how to proceed, including whether to open a full-blown criminal investigation. Garland was also personally involved in some of the key decision-making related to the Trump documents investigation and the decision to send the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s legal team has argued privately that the revelation of the documents in Biden’s possession puts Garland in a tough position of deciding whether to appoint a special counsel.
While Republicans and Trump’s allies have drawn comparisons between the two, Trump had several hundred documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence and resisted the government’s efforts to retrieve them while Biden’s attorneys turned the documents over the day after finding them. Yet Trump’s legal team has discussed the matter internally and ultimately believes it will help their legal case, including their argument about how easy it is for former presidents to take documents labeled classified when they leave office.
“This is huge for us,” one source close to the legal team told CNN.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is calling on Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter.
“I think if you believe a special counsel is necessary to assure the public about the handling of classified documents by Donald Trump, you should apply a special counsel to the mishandling of classified documents by President Biden when he was Vice President,” Graham said on Fox News earlier Wednesday.
The White House is also facing bipartisan scrutiny from the Senate Intelligence Committee, the leaders of which sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines asking for access to the documents found at Biden’s private office, a spokesperson for Sen. Marco Rubio told CNN.
