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The FBI issued the “all clear” on its latest search of one of President Biden’s residences. The announcement came with the first day of special counsel Robert Hur on the job at the Justice Department.
Hur may find that the Biden legal team feels that “all clear” extends beyond the latest search. It could be challenging to make a criminal case after how the investigation has been handled.
At every stage, the FBI has adopted an approach that would compromise or complicate any criminal charge.
The FBI left the home untouched for over three months after classified documents were found in Biden’s former office in DC. While it was recently learned that the FBI did go to that office a couple weeks later, they reportedly elected to have personal counsel for the president conduct searches on the residences. Biden then spent weeks traveling to these residences after the FBI waited to search the premises.
The private searches clearly went through these documents and moved (and potentially organized) material. Despite being given the opportunity to conduct and record the initial searches, the FBI will now have to rely on the accounts of private counsel on how these documents were originally left, including any visible classification markings.
For example, to go through the papers, counsel had to handle them, sort them, and stack or box them. That means that the original conditions are lost in determining, for example, if anyone in the vicinity could have seen a telltale bordered classified jacket or whether a classified document was partially or fully outside of a jacket.
The FBI allowed uncleared private counsel to tread all over these scenes, creating a nightmare of chain of custody.
