House GOP demands visitor logs in Biden classified docs case
Newly empowered House Republicans on Sunday demanded the White House turn over all information related to its searches that have uncovered classified documents at President Joe Bidens home and former office in the wake of more records found at his Delaware residence.
We have a lot of questions,” said Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Comer, R-Ky, said he wants to see all documents and communications related to the searches by the Biden team, as well as visitor logs of the presidents home in Wilmington, Delaware, from January 20, 2021, to present. He said the aim is to determine who might have had access to classified material and how the records got there.
The White House on Saturday said it had discovered five additional pages of classified documents at Bidens home on Thursday, the same day a special counsel was appointed to review the matter.
In a letter Sunday to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Comer criticised the searches by Biden representatives when the Justice Department was beginning to investigate and said Bidens mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardised our national security.” Comer demanded that the White House provide all relevant information including visitor logs by the end of the month.
Appearing on CNNs State of the Union, Comer referred to Bidens home as a crime scene” though he acknowledged that it was not clear whether laws were broken.
My concern is that the special counsel was called for, but yet hours after that we still had the presidents personal attorneys, who have no security clearance, still rummaging around the presidents residence, looking for things I mean that would essentially be a crime scene, so to speak,” Comer said. While the US Secret Service provides security at the presidents private residence, it does not maintain visitor logs, agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Sunday.
We dont independently maintain our own visitor logs because its a private residence, Guglielmi said. He added that the agency does screen visitors to the presidents properties but doesnt maintain records of those checks.
White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Biden has independently maintained records of who has visited his residence.
Asked about Comers request for logs and communications regarding the search for documents, White House spokesman Ian Sams responded: I would simply refer you to what Congressman Comer himself told CNN this morning: At the end of the day, my biggest concern isnt the classified documents to be honest with you. That says it all. In that CNN interview, Comer had added that House Republicans did not trust the Justice Department to give the matter of Bidens classified documents an appropriate level of scrutiny. The House Judiciary Committee on Friday requested that Attorney General Merrick Garland turn over information related to the discovery of documents and Garlands appointment of special counsel Richard Hur to oversee the investigation.
White House officials “can say theyre being transparent, but its anything but, the committee chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures. White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement Saturday that a total of six pages of classified documents were found from Bidens time serving as vice president in the Obama administration during a search of Bidens private library. The White House had said previously that only a single page was found there. The latest disclosure was in addition to the discovery of documents found in December in Bidens garage and in November at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.
Sauber said that Bidens personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped their search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber found the remaining material Thursday, as he was facilitating their retrieval by Justice Department. Sauber did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting. The White House is already facing scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of the initial group of documents at the Biden office.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said the Justice Department rightfully appointed special counsels to get to the bottom of the Biden classified documents matter as well as in a separate investigation into the mishandling of classified documents at former President Donald Trumps private club and residence in Florida.
But Raskin also stressed key differences between the two cases, including that Bidens team readily handed over documents to the National Archives compared with Trumps repeated resistance to such requests.
We should keep a sense of proportion and measure about what were talking about, Raskin told CNN.
Asked Sunday if his oversight committee would investigate Trumps handling of classified documents as well, Comer demurred.
There have been so many investigations of President Trump, I dont feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump, because the Democrats have done that for the past six years, he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)