House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Sunday requested visitor logs from both President Biden’s Wilmington home and the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington, DC after classified files were discovered at both locations.
The files come from Biden’s vice presidency under Barack Obama.
During a controversial interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Kentucky Republican Rep. Comer also vowed to investigate possible “triggering” in the Trump administration when he was grilled over the partisan nature of his investigation against Biden.
“We want to know the residence’s visitor logs. We want to know who had access to the Biden Center for Diplomacy,” Comer said.
“This is the same kind of investigation that Democrats were so outraged about … and demanded that it pass President Trump.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Sunday reiterated his earlier calls for President Biden’s visit logs from Delaware
It comes just a day after the White House announced that five more pages of classified files were found at Biden’s private Delaware residence in the upscale community of Greenville, just outside of Wilmington.
This brings the total number of classified documents found there to six, following a similar announcement earlier last week.
The White House admitted classified files were found on November 2, 2022 in Biden’s former private office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, DC. The statement made it clear that the relevant officials were fully cooperating with the National Archives and Department of Justice (DOJ).
But the government has come under bipartisan scrutiny for only confirming its existence earlier this month, after CBS News first ran the story.
Comer declined to say if he believed Biden committed any crimes on Sunday, although he criticized the president for the way the incident was handled.
The White House announced Saturday that five more classified pages were found in Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware
“Well, we’re not sure yet if they broke the law or not. I will blame the Biden administration for not being transparent,” Comer said.
“Why didn’t we hear about it on November 2nd when the first batch of classified documents was discovered?”
Throughout the interview, he was repeatedly pressed for his comparatively lukewarm reaction to the news that Donald Trump had unlawfully brought dozens of top secret files to his home in Mar-a-Lago after leaving office.
Comer claimed it was “hypocritical” and “political” that the Biden administration appointed a special counsel for the Trump documents on Nov. 18 after weeks of knowing about Bidens.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a new special counsel to investigate the documents found in Biden’s private possession late last week.
Host Jake Tapper played a November 2022 clip of Comer telling CNN that investigating Trump over his Mar-a-Lago documents “will not be a priority” for the new Republican House majority.
Republicans have wept angrily as they claim the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s classified documents home was evidence of a “double standard”.
“What you’re saying to viewers who don’t understand why President Biden’s documents seem like a big priority to you, but President Trump — who took hundreds of other documents with him — hasn’t served a subpoena, contacted the National Archives, or the Justice Department to say, hey, we found these documents, it’s not just a priority,” Tapper said.
He added, “Are you only interested in classified documents if Democrats are committing the abuses?”
“Absolutely not,” Comer replied immediately. “Look, we still don’t know what kind of documents President Trump had. That’s one of the questions we asked the National Archives.”
“Just because Joe Biden’s attorneys say they turned over five documents doesn’t mean they only turned over five documents. They could have handed over 500 documents. I’m sorry, but I don’t have much faith in President Biden’s personal attorneys.
Comer and Tapper also disagreed over whether the vice president, who would have been Biden at the time, has the authority to declassify documents.
At one point, when he pressed whether the committee’s new name “Oversight and Accountability” rather than “Oversight and Reform” would apply to both leaders, Comer said it would.
“I think the tampering with the Trump administration will be part of our overall investigation,” Comer said.
“Because both Democrats and Republicans complained about it to the previous two administrations. So something has to be done.’
But Comer isn’t the only Republican calling for Biden’s visitor logs. Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck wrote to the White House calling for her release.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged questions Thursday about whether they would come out.
Instead, she pointed out that the Biden administration has expanded transparency regarding White House visitor logs, which had been severely curtailed under Trump.