i m bianna golodryga in new york. president biden is avoiding questions and the special counsel is making moves. the justice department has interveered biden s former executive assistant who was on the team that packed up his office at the end of the obama administration. we re told that process was messy and doing high-profile work right up until the inauguration and led to a mad dash to close up the office while biden was still using it. phil mattingly and evan perez are covering all angles. we know biden s former execute assistant had been questioned. we re also learning more about the materials that were found with the classified documents. tell us exactly what the special counsel rob hur will be looking at here? well, bianna, one thing he s trying to do is set up a office and hire and people to bring in to the investigation but a lot of work has already gone on. already happened, during the investigation that was being handled by john lausch, the chicago u.s. attorney
that having been said this is an administration which touted and ran on their level of competence, their experience, the fact that president biden has served both in the senate and obviously as vice president and took classified materials very seriously. that s what he has said before and weighed in on the investigation into how president trump, former president trump handled these materials. how does this impact the administration right now and how they re perceived. look, i think it s a real problem for them that the argument about the trump case from the president himself was basically who does this. how could something like this have happened and, well, now, he phasing a similar problem where documents that should have been turned over to the government at the end of his time in the white house were not. and that s a real problem. it s a political problem. it s a public relations problem. and those problems matter too. i think people s perception of
federal prosecutor elliot williams and abby phillip. we have two special prosecutors. i know the circumstances are different and as we just heard from indicatelyn, trump has not been complaining. jack smith s team not confident that all the documents have been turned over. it does appear at this point that biden s team is complying. so given that how will it impact rob hur s investigation into the biden case? well, you know, certainly his level of cooperation or any subject of an investigation s level of cooperation will have an impact. in terms of are there obstruction charges down the road? it s important even though the justice department had to almost, you know, their hand was forced here into appointing a special counsel to treat and regard these two as very, very different. and, frankly, they ought not
i wouldn ted to know was president biden, was the white house surprised along with merrick garland that they decided more investigation was needed and a special counsel was called? what i can tell you we were not given a heads-up that attorney general garland was going to make made his announcement on the special counsel. that is something that we learned like many of you watching the news. i m not going to get into anything further from that. i can t speak to this person who you news mentioned who has been having conversations or making comments. i m not going to get into that or give reactions from here. what i can tell you is, again, i ll refer to you the white house counsel, and office to talk to my colleagues on any particular questions that you may have that s related to this process and if it s something that you want to know specifically about the review i
would refer you to the department of justice. when president biden did say good willing we have been listening for the last few minutes, karine jean-pierre. acresting a couple of issues clueing the debt ceiling which the government is set to hit next week. the prevailing issue has been on how this administration and the how the president specifically has been handling in their response to news that a special counsel has been appointed to investigate the president s handling of classified information and documents, i want to get back to phil mattingly at the white house. we kept hearing a recurring line, that is i refer you, i refer you to the doj. i refer you to the white house counsel s office. can t help or blame a reporter for trying to ask that question a number of ways. what was your takeaway from what we heard? this is the new normal kind of evolving over the course of the last three or four days and gotten more serious inside the white house, since attorney