What we know so far about where and when the documents were discovered, and when they were disclosed.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he has appointed a special counsel to examine the discovery of classified documents in unauthorized locations in President Biden’s former private office and his Wilmington, Del., home.
The situation carries some parallels to former president Donald Trump’s retention of such documents, for which Garland has also appointed a special counsel. But the information released publicly so far also includes plenty of differences — both in the volume of the documents and in the apparent effort by Biden’s legal team to quickly return the documents to government custody. Trump’s resistance to returning the documents led to the court-approved FBI search of his residence at Mar-a-Lago in August and is central to the legal jeopardy he currently faces.
Below is a timeline of events related to the Biden documents case, based on both reporting about the documents and Garland’s remarks on Thursday. It will be updated as we learn more.
Nov. 2: The first batch of classified documents — about 10 of them — is found after one of Biden’s private attorneys opens a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington. The Penn Biden Center is a think tank affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania that Biden founded and whose offices he used after his time as vice president ended in early 2017.
