Both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are under investigation into their handling of classified documents -- but are they being treated the same way?
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling on special counsels at the Department of Justice to treat the former and sitting presidents equally as they investigate their possession of classified documents.
"I think the important thing with regard to documents is that both these guys ought to be treated exactly the same way. Exactly the same way," McConnell told NewsRadio 840 WHAS, per Axios. "And so I think the attorney general probably did the right thing by having two special counsels. What's good for one candidate for president ought to be good for another one."
Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Justice Department was moving forward with its case against Biden and appointed a special counsel to investigate the classified documents discovered at his Delaware home and one of his offices. The documents relate to his time as Barack Obama's vice-president.
In November, Garland also assigned a special counsel to investigate Trump and boxes of classified documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Trump has claimed that he declassified the documents.
While two separate investigators will be looking at the cases, the situations are not the same, according to former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger.
"There's a big difference between what's happened with Biden and what's happened with Trump,” Heffelfinger told WCCO. Part of what makes the cases different is how both men handled the documents, as Biden handed them over voluntarily and Trump's were taken by force after he failed to relinquish them and a search warrant was executed.
The public was also initially shielded from Biden's situation, as the documents were found and handed over on Nov. 2, 2022, days before the midterm elections, but only revealed recently.
Biden has said he was "surprised" to learn about the classified documents and vowed to cooperate with the investigation. Meantime, Trump has accused the Justice Department of acting out of political motivation, calling its investigation of him "rigged."
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