Searches at Joe Biden’s can put an end to his political career

Justice Department officials found during the first-ever search of the private home of current US President Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware, “six more items, consisting of documents with confidential marks and related materials.” It is reported by NBC News. The search took place on January 20 and lasted almost 13 hours, but its results became known on January 21.

According to the lawyer of the head of the American state, Bob Bauer, Biden voluntarily offered law enforcement officers access to his house in order to allow the Department of Justice to search the entire premises for “potential classified materials.” It is known that the president’s lawyers and representatives of the White House observed the progress of the investigation. The Justice Department had full access to Biden’s personal belongings, including handwritten notes, documents, memorabilia, to-do lists, and timetables.

The documents found relate both to the period of work of the current US leader in the Senate (where he served from 1973 to 2009), and to the time of his tenure as Vice President Barack Obama.

According to Fox News, the search at Biden’s house was carried out under the supervision of the appointee of the 45th US President Donald Trump, Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lauscha Jr., who has been involved in this investigation since the fall of 2022. On January 12, the US Department of Justice appointed Biden special counsel in the case of classified documents Robert Hura, who was also nominated by Trump in 2017.

The current discovery can be generally considered the third episode in the Biden scandal – the first secret documents were discovered at the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania on November 2, 2022, but this became known to the public only on January 10. Then among the discovered materials were intelligence about Ukraine, Iran and the UK. The White House, for its part, acknowledged that Biden used these office spaces in Washington from 2017 to 2020.

Biden aides then found classified documents in a garage and personal library in Wilmington. Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for his part, called on Congress to investigate the presence of secret documents in the private home of the incumbent president. “My Corvette is in a closed garage. They are [документы] they didn’t lie on the street, ”Biden commented at a press conference on the second incident.

At the same time, The New York Times (NYT), citing anonymous sources, reported that White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein, who has been working with Biden for many years, may leave his post in the near future. Most likely, this resignation will occur after Biden’s address to Congress on February 7 and will be the most high-profile personnel change in the administration since 2021. And while the NYT does not directly link Klein’s departure to the development of the classified information scandal, it is his successor who will have to deal with the consequences of the growing crisis.

The unprecedented hours-long search of the personal belongings of the incumbent president and the factor of the possible imminent departure of the closest ally is an indicator that Biden’s political career may already be doomed, said Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute for the US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In his opinion, even people from his inner circle may be interested in a sharp weakening of the president’s positions for various reasons.

Now Biden’s ratings, which went up after the midterm elections, are doomed to decline, Vasilyev believes. Such domestic political crises in the history of the United States often led to the fact that the White House tried to switch the attention of the American public to the international situation, including by resorting to the escalation of conflicts, he recalls.

The concerted investigative actions at Biden took place somewhat differently than a traditional search, which usually means the unexpected appearance of a huge number of law enforcement officers in cars with sirens, says RIAC expert Alexei Naumov: “But this search will certainly have a bad effect on the reputation of Biden, who sought to prove that he is an adult in the room (“an adult in the room.” – Vedomosti), and, unlike Trump, he knows how a statesman and a disciplined politician should behave.

At the same time, the expert doubts that Biden had malicious intent when working with documents. Biden’s ratings, adds Naumov, are likely to go down amid the search, as he will not be able to turn it in his favor in the style of Trump, who presented similar investigative actions as revenge from the “Washington swamp.” At the same time, the Biden team is trying to minimize the consequences of the scandal, while cooperating with the investigation. But the Republicans, who received a majority in the House of Representatives, now have the opportunity to write subpoenas and hold public hearings and will certainly use the leverage that has appeared, the RIAC expert concludes.