Watchdog Files Ethics Complaint Over White House Lawyers in Biden’s Classified Documents Fallout

President Joe Biden at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House in Washington on Jan. 12, 2023. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

A government watchdog group on Tuesday filed an ethics complaint, claiming that President Joe Biden misused taxpayer-funded resources by using White House lawyers to address his own legal crisis.

In the complaint sent to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) took issue with the involvement of the White House Counsel’s Office in the ongoing fallout from Biden’s alleged improper handling of classified documents.

“The White House Counsel’s Office is not the President’s personal law firm. It does not represent the President in purely personal matters that are separate from his role as President,” argued the PPT, which describes itself as a group of former public servants dedicated to monitoring conflicts of interests and illegal behavior across the government.

“Yet, the White House Counsel’s Office appears to be acting as lawyers to Joe Biden, private citizen, rather than President Biden in this matter.”

Federal law prohibits employees from using their official position for personal gain, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Federal employees also have an obligation to “protect and conserve government property and resources,” and to “make an honest effort” to only use official time and government property for government business.

“Specifically, we believe taxpayer resources may have been inappropriately used by senior White House lawyers, including Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber, to personally benefit Joe Biden,” the PPT stated in the complaint.

“We further believe that the apparent representation of Mr. Biden by the White House Counsel’s Office in this matter creates an untenable conflict of interest for that office,” the group added. “The result, intended or not, could be to reduce transparency into the mishandling of state secrets and foreclose disclosure of communications between White House Counsel staff while acting on behalf of Joe Biden in his capacity as a citizen facing the prospect of criminal prosecution.”

The complaint, calling for an “independent and thorough investigation” into the matter, is also addressed to the Justice Department’s chief of the Public Integrity Section and the White House Counsel.

News broke earlier this month that classified material dating from Biden’s vice presidency had been found in the Washington office of the Penn Biden Center, a think tank affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, in the days leading up to the 2022 midterm elections. The White House later admitted that more pages of classified documents were discovered in the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.

In response to the controversy, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur, a former Maryland U.S. attorney, as special counsel to investigate whether Biden improperly handled classified material.

Hur, who was appointed to the Maryland court by President Donald Trump and currently works at a Washington law firm, said in a statement he would conduct the investigation “swiftly and thoroughly” with “fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment.”

Meanwhile, the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have started their own probe into the matter. In a letter to Garland, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) gave his department until Jan. 27 to provide information about Biden’s “mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material.”

The Republicans also specifically asked for records related to the appointment of Hur as special counsel. “The circumstances of this appointment raise fundamental oversight questions that the Committee routinely examines,” the congressmen wrote.