The White House dismissed Republican outrage over the discovery of classified documents at the home and former office of President Joe Biden, calling the outrage from GOP lawmakers “shameless hypocrisy.”
“House Republicans have no credibility,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement there. “His request must be met with skepticism and he must face questions about why he politicized this issue and admit that he does not care about classified material.”
“President Biden did the right thing and cooperated fully with the thorough review, but House Republicans are playing politics in a hypocritical attempt to attack President Biden,” Sams continued.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), launched an investigation a day after the White House first announced that lawyers had found some classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president in Washington’s private office. . (The matter is also being investigated by a special counsel appointed last week by Attorney General Merrick Garland.)
After the White House said on Saturday that additional classified documents were found at the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, Comer asked the Biden administration to release more information, including visitor logs. The White House said it did not have the records “due to private residence.”
Comer, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, defended his decision to investigate Biden, but said it was “not a priority” for his committee to also investigate former President Donald Trump. Trump is currently the subject of a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice into the removal of classified documents from the White House and his handling of the materials.
“I don’t feel like we should spend a lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the last six years,” Comer told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Comer also told Tapper that he was less concerned with the documents than what he described as “discrepancies in how former President Trump was treated” by investigators.
There are some key differences between the situations of Biden and Trump. The FBI found hundreds of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in August with a search warrant. About 20 classified documents have been found in Biden’s home and former office.
And while Biden’s legal team reported the discovery of the documents and appeared to be cooperating with the investigation, Trump failed to return the material specifically requested by the National Archives.