Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked the Department of Justice on Tuesday to provide an unredacted copy of the memorandum detailing the scope of special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked Attorney General Merrick Garland for the memo in a letter obtained by Breitbart News, adding that he was also seeking “any other document describing, listing, or delineating the authority and jurisdiction of the special counsel.”
Read a copy of the letter below:
The request to Garland comes the same day Jordan asked Garland for the same memo for special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents and whether Trump or anyone in his orbit “interfered with the transfer of power” after the 2020 election.
🚨 #BREAKING: @Jim_Jordan requests unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probes regarding President Trump. pic.twitter.com/LD3zMcWziW
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) June 6, 2023
The Judiciary Committee’s dual probes into the special counsels’ work come as some Republicans have criticized the Justice Department for taking a harsher approach with Trump than with Biden, particularly on the matter of classified documents.
Garland appointed Hur to investigate Biden on January 12 after CBS first broke the story that month that documents with classified markings had been discovered at the Penn Biden Center two months earlier from when Biden was vice president. Biden’s attorney revealed on January 12 that additional documents marked classified were also found in Biden’s Wilmington home garage.
Biden and his attorney have characterized the number of documents found in total as “small” and emphasized their immediate compliance with the National Archives and the Justice Department.
Jordan was among several GOP lawmakers in January to raise questions about the Biden administration’s transparency on the matter, however, and questioned whether the Justice Department had any role in hiding the discovery of the documents from the public from November 2022, when the documents were first found, to January 2023, when CBS first made the situation public.
In Trump’s case, the classified documents saga began more than two years ago, when the National Archives first reached out to Trump to retrieve what it said were missing documents.
Following a grand jury subpoena in May 2022 and an FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022, a Justice Department court filing revealed it had retrieved more than 300 documents marked classified in total from Trump’s residence.
While a number of federal laws exist surrounding the handling of classified documents, the former president has denied violating any and contended he had the authority as president to declassify them and that he did that.
Jordan asked that Garland provide both memoranda by June 20.
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.
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