The discovery of classified documents on private property bears some resemblance to the FBI’s seizure of sensitive White House records at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, in August. However, in Biden’s case, the documents were handed over willingly, according to Sauber. They were also not discovered at Biden’s private residence.

Biden in addition has told aides that he was not aware of the presence of the classified documents at the Penn Center until they were discovered, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss internal conversations.

Aides to the president downplayed the comparisons to the Trump Mar-a-Lago matter, noting the disparity in the number of documents found as well as pointing out that the White House returned them as soon as they were discovered while Trump repeatedly rebuffed requests. They insisted that the White House would fully cooperate with the Department of Justice and expected the matter to be resolved quickly and amicably.

Biden ignored a shouted question about the documents Monday evening while in Mexico City and White House aides, at least to start, decided to allow a statement from the president’s outside counsel to be their only planned public response. But they knew Biden would almost certainly field a question about the matter while in front of reporters on Tuesday — and potentially be confronted by his own scathing comments about Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, which he labeled “irresponsible.”

And a grim realization also set in around the West Wing that the discovery complicates the politics — if not the legal case — surrounding the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

Immediately, there were voices on the right accusing the government of playing favorites by not revealing the discovery sooner – they were found less than a week before the midterms. Trump himself drew a comparison to his own case in a post on his own social media platform, Truth Social.

“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump posted.

In Mexico City for a summit on Monday, Biden ignored a shouted question from reporters about the documents.

Lausch is a Trump appointee, one of two presidentially appointed U.S. attorneys kept on by the Biden administration. He was kept on at the request of both Democratic senators from Illinois to continue an investigation into the Democratic speaker of the Illinois House at the time, Michael Madigan.

There is no indication that Garland has formally named Lausch as a special counsel, as he did with Jack Smith in November in the Trump documents and 2020-election-related investigations.

“Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and National Archives have made compliance with the Presidential Records Act a top priority,” said House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who has teased extensive investigations into the Biden administration. “We expect the same treatment for President Biden.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on House Oversight, said Biden’s attorneys “appear to have taken immediate and proper action to notify the National Archives” of the documents.

The Maryland congressman said he had confidence in Garland to review the circumstances surrounding the documents’ discovery “and make an impartial decision about any further action.”

The documents were discovered when Biden’s “personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,” Sauber’s statement said.

The White House Counsel’s office notified the Archives of the discovery on the day it happened, he said. The documents weren’t part of any previous inquiry from the Archives, the attorney added.

Biden used the Penn Biden Center space from 2017 until the beginning of his 2020 campaign, Sauber said.