WASHINGTON (AP) — The volume of classified documents is vastly different, the circumstances of discovery worlds apart.
But the revelation that lawyers for President Joe Biden have located what the White House says is a “small number” of classified documents in a locked closet is an unexpected wrinkle for a Justice Department already investigating Donald Trump over the retention of top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.
Despite abundant factual and legal differences in the situations, Trump seized on the news in hopes of neutralizing his own vulnerability — at least in the court of public opinion. The development is unlikely to affect the Justice Department’s decision making with regard to charging Trump. But it could make a criminal case a tougher sell politically, hardening the skepticism of Republicans in Congress and others who have doubted the basis for a viable prosecution.
“I don’t think that it impacts Trump’s legal calculus at all, but it certainly does impact the political narrative going forward,” said Jay Town, who served as U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Alabama during the Trump administration.
“To the extent that the political narrative is a consideration,” he added, “it does make it harder to bring charges against former President Trump as it relates to the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.”
The Mar-a-Lago investigation is being handled by a special counsel, while the Justice Department assigned the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, a Trump administration holdover, to scrutinize the Biden matter. It’s all unfolding as newly ascendant Republicans have taken control of the House, with plans to target the department with complaints of politicized law enforcement.
Already, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, has requested a damage assessment of the classified documents from the director of national intelligence. And Trump, referring to the FBI’s seizure in August of boxes of classified record at Mar-a-Lago, asked on his social media platform: “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?”

Apnews