WASHINGTON (AP) – Newly-reinforced House Republicans on Sunday demanded the White House release all information related to a search that uncovered classified documents at President Joe Biden’s home and former office as more records were found at his Delaware home.
“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 search by the Biden team, as well as visitor logs at the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, from Jan. 20, 2021, to the present. He said the goal is to determine who has access to classified material and how the records are stored.
The White House on Saturday said it found five additional pages of classified documents at Biden’s home on Thursday, the same day a special counsel was appointed to look into the matter.
In a letter Sunday to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Comer criticized the search by Biden’s deputy as the Justice Department began investigating and said Biden’s “mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has endangered our national security.” Comer demanded that the White House provide all relevant information including visitor logs by the end of the month.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Comer called Biden’s home a “crime scene” although he acknowledged it was unclear whether any laws had been broken.
“My concern is that the special counsel was requested, but a few hours after that, we still have the president’s personal lawyer, who doesn’t have a security clearance, still going around the president’s house, looking for things – I mean it would be a crime scene, so to speak ,” said Comer.
While the U.S. Secret Service provides security at the president’s private residence, it does not maintain visitor logs, agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Sunday.
“We don’t independently maintain visitor logs because this is a private home,” Guglielmi said. He added that the agency screened visitors to the president’s properties but did not keep records of the checks.
White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Biden has kept records of who has visited his home.
Asked about Comer’s request for logs and communications about the document search, White House spokesman Ian Sams replied: “I’ll just refer you to what Congressman Comer told CNN this morning: ‘At the end of the day, the biggest concern is’t the documents an honest secret with you.’ That says it all.”
In the CNN interview, Comer added that House Republicans do not trust the Justice Department to give Biden’s classified documents the appropriate level of oversight. The House Judiciary Committee on Friday asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to turn over information related to the discovery of documents and Garland’s appointment of special counsel Richard Hur to oversee the investigation.
White House officials “can say it’s transparent, but it’s nothing,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement Saturday that a total of six pages of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president in the Obama administration were found during a search of Biden’s personal library. The White House has previously said only one page was found there.
The latest disclosures are in addition to the discovery of documents found in December in Biden’s garage and in November in his former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.
Sauber said Biden’s personal attorney, who does not have a security clearance, called off the search after finding the first page on Wednesday afternoon. Sauber discovered the remaining material on Thursday, as he facilitated its retrieval by the Department of Justice. Sauber did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting. The White House has faced scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of an initial group of documents in Biden’s office.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said the Justice Department has the right to appoint a special counsel to “hear” the issue of Biden’s classified documents as well as in a separate investigation into mishandling. classified documents on former President Donald Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.
But Raskin also highlighted key differences between the two cases, including the ease with which the Biden team turned over documents to the National Archives compared to Trump’s repeated resistance to the request.
“We have to keep the proportions and measure of what we’re using,” Raskin told CNN.
Asked Sunday if the oversight committee would investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents as well, Comer denied.
“There’s been a lot of investigation of President Trump, I don’t think it’s going to take a lot of time to investigate President Trump, because the Democrats have been doing it for the last six years,” he said.
Madhani reported from Wilmington, Delaware.