Biden interviews with special counsel probing his handling of classified documents

Oct. 9 (UPI) -- Over the last two days, President Joe Biden has sat for interviews with Robert Hur, the special counsel investigating the discovery of classified documents in a private office used by Biden after exiting the White House as vice president and at his home, the White House said.

"The voluntary interview was conducted at the White House over two days, Sunday and Monday, and concluded Monday," White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement Monday evening.

"As we have said from the beginning, the president and the White House are cooperating with this investigation, and as it has been appropriate, we have provided relevant updates publicly, being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation," Sams said.

A handful of classified documents, from Biden's tenure as vice president to then-President Barack Obama, was found by his lawyers clearing out a private office at the think tank Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement that he used periodically between 2019 and at the start of his presidential campaign in 2020.

Spurred by the early November discovery, a search by the president's aids then uncovered a second batch of documents in the garage of his Delaware home, with other documents found in an adjacent office. All batches of documents were made public in January.

The same month the discovery of the documents was disclosed to the public, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of Hur as special counsel in the case. Biden at the time said he was "surprised" to learn that documents had been found and that he was cooperating with investigators, while his administration said it was confident that the review would show the documents were inadvertently misplaced.

The launch of the investigation came as another special counsel, Jack Smith, probed former President Donald Trump over allegations of mishandling hundreds of classified documents in his possession from his time in the White House.

In contrast to Biden who voluntarily handed over the documents in his possession once discovered, the FBI in August 2022 raided Trump's Florida Mar-a-Lago resort to retrieve those still in the New York real estate mogul's possession after repeated requests to voluntarily return them to the National Archives and Records Administration.

In June, Trump was charged with 37 criminal counts in connection to alleged illegal retention of some 300 classified government documents. He was then charged with further counts in late July.

Biden sitting for interviews with Hur suggests his investigation may soon be coming to an end.