Joe Biden's 2024 election hopes dealt blow with new investigation ...

George Washington University Jonathan Turley noted that the Department of Justice had already said that the mishandling of these documents can most certainly be a crime.

“Many experts said this is a crime just based on possession, and further said that Donald Trump should be barred from running for the presidency even if he pleads to a misdemeanour,” Mr Turley said.

Andy McCarthy, a former assistant US attorney, said that Biden’s comments last year – when he called Trump’s handling of classified documents as “irresponsible” – would come back to haunt him.

“One of the key rules of politics that we see is ‘what goes around, comes around’, and it’s coming around big time at the moment.”

Following the FBI’s raid on Mr Trump’s home in August last year, the former president attracted a surge in political support from 41.4 per cent approval to 44.8 per cent according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight. However, much of that support was seen as coming from those who thought Mr Trump was being made a political target.

Mr McCarthy said that the two investigations would have a significant impact on both Biden and Trump’s 2024 election hopes.

“To bring indictments against these people, you’re talking about the sitting president and the former president, but both of them essentially are candidates in the 2024 election, so this has tremendous ramifications in terms of the politics of 2024 as well,” Mr McCarthy said.

New US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said of the latest news: “I think Congress has to investigate this.”

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner, requested on Thursday (Friday AEDT) that intelligence agencies conduct a “damage assessment” of potentially classified documents. He also asked for briefings from Mr Garland and the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, on their reviews.

“The presence of classified information at these separate locations could implicate the president in the mishandling, potential misuse, and exposure of classified information,” Turner wrote.

On Thursday (Friday AEDT), White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration would co-operate closely with the Justice Department throughout its review.

“We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovering this mistake.”