John Lausch, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, was designated to investigate the discovery of classified documents at a pro-Biden think tank, CBS News reported.
CBS News said Lausch, appointed by former President Donald Trump in November 2017, recently briefed Attorney General Merrick Garland and will soon submit a final report to Garland.
The White House said Monday that the Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022.
CBS News reported that the review is considered a preliminary step. Garland will determine if further investigation or the appointment of a special counsel is necessary.
The Biden administration said the White House Counsel's Office notified the National Archives and Records Administration on the same day the documents were found "in a locked closet" and that the agency retrieved them the next morning.
"The discovery of these documents was made by the President's attorneys," Richard A. Sauber, a special White House counsel, wrote in the statement, CBS News reported. "The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives.
"Since that discovery, the President's personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives."
Lausch, a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, is one of two current Trump-era U.S. attorneys still serving. The other is Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who is leading a probe into Hunter Biden, the president's son, CBS News said.
The Presidential Records Act requires all presidential and vice-presidential documents be turned over to the National Archives, and there are special protocols to keep classified information secure.
In August, the FBI raided former President Donald Trump's home in Florida to obtain documents the government said are classified. Trump said he declassified the records.
When he appeared on "60 Minutes" in September, Biden was asked about the documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago.
"How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible," Biden told the CBS show.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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