Biden, Trump cases pull Justice Department toward politics

In naming a special counsel to investigate the presence of classified documents at President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington office, Attorney General Merrick Garland described the appointment as underscoring the Justice Department’s commitment to independence and accountability in particularly sensitive investigations. Garland used identical phrasing in November in appointing a different special counsel for a different politically explosive investigation into classified documents for a different political figure — the retention of top secret records at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Brandon Van Grack, a former Justice Department prosecutor who served on then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as it investigated ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, said appointing a special counsel can help expedite an investigation, ensure it has appropriate resources and create “at least the perception of impartiality and fairness.” “With respect to this decision, this specific decision, it’s at least understandable why the attorney general would want all of those benefits,” Van Grack said. On Thursday, Garland named Robert Hur, a former senior Justice Department official in the Trump administration who served as U.S. attorney in Maryland, to serve as special counsel.