Who is Bob Bauer? The man behind Biden's strategy on classified documents

Additional classified documents found at Joe Biden's residence 3:26

(CNN) --

President Joe Biden faced the prospect of an imminent federal investigation following the discovery of classified documents in his former Washington City office in November, and it fell to Bob Bauer, his personal attorney, to give the go-ahead. news to the White House, said two sources familiar with the matter.

Bauer is now the driving force behind a strategy that has focused on cooperating with investigators and trying to reduce Biden's legal risk to zero, but has also drawn criticism for worsening the president's public relations and political problems.

It stands at the center of the legal maelstrom swirling under the Biden presidency, and has delivered a series of bad news for the president in recent months, with four subsequent discoveries of additional documents since the first search on November 2.

The latest came after a nearly 13-hour search the FBI conducted Friday at the president's home in Wilmington, Delaware, with the permission of Biden's lawyers.

Bauer, a veteran Democratic lawyer and former White House adviser under President Barack Obama, has developed a knack for telling powerful people things they need but don't necessarily want to hear, several former colleagues said.

Part of it lies in his way of expressing himself.

The rest is due to what several described as unflappable behavior, even in the midst of spiraling crises.

• The FBI found additional classified documents at the personal residence of the US president.

"He's undaunted when it comes to breaking news to a client," said Valerie Jarrett, a top Obama adviser who worked with Bauer in the White House.

"He never hesitates. You don't have to wonder if he's going to buckle under the pressure."

And so, when Jarrett and two other top aides agreed they had to tell Obama news he "didn't want to hear" about what she described as a "very sensitive and personal matter," they sought out Bauer.

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Bauer reprized his role as bearer of bad news on November 2.

After a White House official relayed Bauer's first tip to Biden, he gave the president a fuller briefing, outlining the principles of a coping strategy that continues to guide public stance. and private office of the White House and has been the subject of heated public scrutiny.

Those criticisms have focused mostly on the first White House statement earlier this month, acknowledging the discovery of classified documents in the Penn Biden Center office in November but omitting the discovery of a second batch. of documents at Biden's home in Wilmington in late December.

"I've been a bit surprised, because Bob is usually very aware of these things," said a former Obama White House official who worked with Bauer.

Like the decision not to disclose the initial discovery of classified documents for more than two months, people familiar with the matter said the Biden team wanted to avoid public disclosures that could be seen as an attempt to get ahead of the Justice Department and undermine the investigation.

For months, Bauer was part of the small circle of advisers who weighed what to disclose and when.

They included White House lawyers including White House special counsel Richard Sauber and Anita Dunn, Biden's top communications adviser and wife of Bauer.

Keeping the information secret was intentional, even at the risk of leaving communications advisers in the dark, because legal concerns were the driving force behind the decision-making process.

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The group privy to the matter remained very small, though it expanded to include Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, and his top adviser, Mike Donilon, until it became inevitable that the president's team would have to prepare to be dealt with. leaked to the media, people familiar with the details said.

The advisers understood that not disclosing the discovery of a second batch of documents at Biden's home in that initial statement would draw criticism, but they decided to stick with Bauer's legal strategy, betting that losing some credibility with the press was less important than losing it. credibility with Justice Department officials, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Biden's team also believed that making a fuller disclosure would not have lessened public outrage, the source said.

Above all else, the Biden team is motivated by a desire to cooperate and bring the Justice Department investigation to a successful conclusion.

That mindset motivated Biden's team to quickly accept an FBI search of his Wilmington home, according to a source familiar with the matter, just nine days after Biden's lawyers conducted their last search of the property.

That source said Biden's legal team viewed the FBI search as inevitable, especially after the discovery of additional documents at the Wilmington home, and decided "the quicker it happens, the better."

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"This is a team that has consistently shown they're much more interested in the long-term game than whatever the topic of the day is on Twitter," said a second person familiar with strategic planning.

"It's understandable that outsiders don't see it that way, but it's not a drastic change: it's what they've always done, even if it doesn't satisfy people on the periphery."

There would be no deviation from carefully crafted plans to highlight Biden's agenda and no changes to his daily schedule.

Biden officials would publicly highlight the stark differences between the investigations of the Biden and Trump documents, and those distinctions would also drive their behind-the-scenes process.

A source familiar with the matter noted that a mid-November letter from the Justice Department's Homeland Security Division, ordering Biden's legal team not to review or transfer material and asking for full cooperation, weighed heavily on that idea, which Biden's legal team understood as issuing minimal public statements about the ongoing investigation.

Bauer also wanted to avoid creating a precedent for proactively sharing new information about the case and risking providing an incomplete picture of an ongoing investigation, the source said, a picture the Justice Department would have to correct.

In practice, the White House's first incomplete public statement on the documents not only undermined the administration's stated commitment to public transparency, but also caused a ripple effect at the Justice Department, where Attorney General Merrick Garland, was preparing to appoint a special prosecutor.

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Garland had initially planned to withhold details of the investigation during that announcement, according to people briefed on the matter.

But the White House's omission of the Wilmington documents led Justice Department officials to reverse course, according to these people, with Garland presenting a timeline revealing that the second batch of documents had been found weeks earlier, and that the White House knew it.

The White House's omission of that detail in the opening statement embodied the ongoing tension between a legal and a communications strategy, and while Bauer's former colleagues said he always considered both, his focus was on providing the better legal advice.

"Bob is politically sophisticated, he understands all of that, but when he plays the role of a lawyer, he behaves like one, which is to say, he's conservative in securing, safeguarding his client's legal interests," said David Axelrod, former senior counsel of Obama who worked with Bauer in the White House.

Biden's confidence in Bauer

Nearly a dozen former colleagues and friends who spoke to CNN unanimously described Bauer as a bright and intelligent lawyer, cautious and rarely nervous.

They invariably called him "helpful," "brilliant," and a true "lawyer's attorney" who demonstrated tremendous integrity in his professional life.

"There is no lawyer in the country better equipped to handle a matter like this than Bob Bauer. Period," said Kathy Ruemmler, a former White House attorney who was Bauer's top deputy during the Obama administration.

"The stakes couldn't be higher," said Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican election lawyer and friendly rival of Bauer for decades.

"But Bob spent 40 years on high-stakes issues and representing presidents, public officials and high-profile candidates. From (Biden's) perspective, Bob is the right person for this."

Bauer's choice as Biden's personal attorney came as no surprise to anyone inside the White House.

Even before serving as general counsel on Biden's 2020 campaign, where he navigated sexual assault allegations made against Biden by a former Senate staffer, Bauer had been a sounding board and adviser, including as Biden was mulling a run for president. after the death of his son Beau in 2015. Bauer reached an agreement with his law firm to act as an adviser to Biden while he deliberated whether he was prepared to run for the Democratic nomination.

Bauer took the lead in preparing Biden's 2020 campaign for what they knew could be a tough election day, or even a week.

Then-President Donald Trump and his allies had made it more than clear that if things didn't go their way, they wouldn't go down easily.

Biden campaign officials, and the candidate himself, relied on what one person described as Bauer's ability to see through the fog as they braced for the deluge of conspiracy theories and lies from his opponent.

"Biden has always fully trusted what Bob was telling him," said a person familiar with the relationship between the two.

"You don't hear him question it, which is not the case with the rest of the team."

Bauer has also become one of the few people who has earned the deep trust of both Obama and Biden, whose inner circles are barely a match.

Bauer has been a personal attorney for both and was one of the few advisers to be thanked in Biden's 2017 memoir.

Don Verrilli, the former attorney general who served as Bauer's deputy when he was White House counsel, was a close witness to Obama's confidence in Bauer.

And during Zoom meetings between Biden and members of his vice president search committee, which Bauer led, Verrilli saw a similar trust develop.

"It was obvious how much respect (Biden) had for Bob and how much he trusted him," Verrilli said.

Dunn, a senior White House communications adviser, is also one of the few who have broken through in both circles.

Bauer and Dunn are now paired when it comes to taking on the Biden documents case.

People who have worked with the couple before say they hold each other's points of view highly, even if they don't always coincide.

"If you didn't know they were married, you wouldn't know it. They're professionals," says Ruemmler.

"He gives his point of view, she gives hers. They don't always agree."

Future of Bauer's cooperation strategy

Bauer's strategy of maximum cooperation could be put to the test when special counsel Robert Hur takes over the case.

Prosecutor John Lausch's initial review of the matter of the Biden documents was not a full-fledged criminal investigation, and did not involve a grand jury.

Even an interview with a key witness, Biden's lawyer Pat Moore, who first discovered the classified material in the Washington office, appears to have been an informal conversation that did not lead to a 302 form that the government uses to keep tabs on. of the interviews.

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Now Hur, who has yet to formally assume the role, is in the process of assembling his team, with legal experts hoping he will turn to a grand jury.

Biden's legal team has stressed that it plans to continue cooperating with the investigation, but a source familiar with the matter said disagreements could arise with the Justice Department over what future cooperation should look like.

Bauer might, for example, be faced with the question of whether the president should be available to answer questions from investigators.

The White House has not ruled out a presidential interview.

"We're not going to preempt that process with the special counsel and speculate about what they may or may not want or ask for," said Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Attorney's Office.

-- Paula Reid and MJ Lee contributed reporting.

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