Why Joe Biden's Attorneys Were Allowed to Look for Documents Unaided

After the discovery of several classified documents in President Joe Biden's former office in Washington and at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, many have questioned why Biden's own attorneys were allowed to operate without the presence of any external official.

In early November, just a few days ahead of the midterm elections, it was Biden's own lawyers who first discovered an unspecified number of classified documents from the Democrat's time as vice president at the Penn Biden Center as they were clearing out the president's former office.

It was again the president's own team of attorneys who searched Biden's Delaware homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach for additional classified documents, which the White House counsel's office confirmed on January 12 that they found in Wilmington. Two days later, the presidential team added that five more pages had been found at this home.

But as former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner told NewsNation on Tuesday, some of the attorneys present in the searches of the president's former office and homes do not personally work for Biden, even if they are White House staff members.

Talking on the Early Morning show, Epner said: "There are two sets of attorneys who were involved here, who played very different roles. One is the White House counsel office, who are attorneys to the Office of the President of the United States. And the second are Biden's personal attorneys.

"The attorneys who are White House Counsel's staff owe a duty to the government of the United States, not to Joe Biden as an individual. If they find stuff, they essentially have to act as if they were FBI agents."

This second set of lawyers working for the White House, according to Epner, are loyal to the government rather than to Joe Biden.

"As in a company, you don't owe a duty to the CEO, you owe a duty to the company. And if you find the CEO has been embezzling funds, you go to the board of directors," Epner said.

He added that the attorneys would likely refer to the White House counsel or Robert Hur, who has been nominated by Attorney General Merrick Garland as the special counsel to conduct an investigation into the matter.

"White House counsel could not say, 'Oh, that's privileged, I have to protect Joe Biden,'" Epner said. "Or at least that's what the theory is."

The scandal that has grown out of the discovery of the classified documents in Biden's possession has been called a "political gift" to Republicans. They have drawn a parallel between Biden's situation and that of Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was raided by the FBI in August 2022 in an attempt to retrieve sensitive material.

However, while Trump's residence were raided by officials after authorities made several attempts to retrieve the classified documents from the former president's legal team, Biden's lawyers immediately informed the National Archives of the findings, and Department of Justice officials promptly took possession of them.