United States Senator Josh Hawley (pictured) asked Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday to explain the Department of Justice's "disparate treatment" of two cases involving classified government documents found at respective private premises of former US President Donald Trump and former Vice President and current President Joe Biden.
"The double standard here is astounding. The underlying behavior at issue - a President's retention of old classified documents dating back to a past presidency - is materially the same in both cases," the Missouri Republican argued in a letter sent to Garland. News about Biden's papers was released only recently but they were found on November 2, 2022, "just days before a hotly contested midterm election," meaning that "the Biden Administration and its allies in the media did their best to bury the story," Hawley noted.
Specifically, the lawmaker asked Garland why it took so long for the story to surface, why there hadn't been an FBI raid on Biden's office in search of other classified documents, and if he plans to appoint a special counsel to investigate the incident.
