Color me shocked. Attorney General Merrick Garland held his promised press conference on Thursday, and the news is not good for Joe Biden. A special counsel is now being appointed to probe the mishandling of classified documents by the president, part of an ever-growing political scandal plaguing the White House.

That decision was likely spurred by the discovery of a second trove of documents at Biden’s personal residence in Wilmington, DE. At the home, documents were “found” in the garage, as well as an adjacent room.

There’s a lot to unpack here, including the timeline; but first, here’s Garland making the announcement.

#BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has named Robert Hur as Special Counsel regarding the investigation of classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center and his Wilmington home. pic.twitter.com/ph0MAohEdk

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 12, 2023

Whether this will lead to any accountability when all is said and done is an open question, but there’s no denying this is a very big deal, at least politically. Biden was getting ready to announce his run for reelection in 2024. That plan has been nuked by a scandal that now has him being probed for probable criminality.

During the presser, Garland also revealed that the DOJ has known about the second trove of documents since December 20th, 2022. That means that the White House knew there were more (given they supposedly reported them) but lied to the press, playing the initial revelation of classified documents being “found” at the Penn Biden Center as a flukey accident.

AG Garland says that on DECEMBER 20TH, President Biden's personal counsel informed the U.S. attorney in Illinois that additional documents were identified in the Wilmington garage.

The WH failed to acknowledge those additional documents until they were reported this week.

— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) January 12, 2023

Further, Garland also shared at the presser that he appointed a U.S. Attorney to look into the matter on November 14th, 2022. The public wasn’t informed of the ongoing matter until January 10th, and that was only because sources finally leaked it and forced the administration’s hand. Compare that to all the purposeful publicity produced by the DOJ regarding Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents, and you start to see how differently the wheels of justice turn depending on which parties are involved.

At this point, it would seem silly to allow Biden to keep driving the train here. The FBI needs to be doing the searching, not Biden’s lawyers, and there are a lot of properties that need to be gone through. Taking the White House’s word on anything would be foolish given they’ve already misled the public on the matter.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect that Attorney General Garland appointed a U.S. Attorney to look into the matter on November 14th, 2022, rather than November 10th.