- Republicans have sought to compare the Biden records issue.
- Sensitive materials were discovered in his office and garage.
- Trump has announced that he will run for president again in 2024.
The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee on Sunday demanded visitor logs for President Joe Biden‘s house in Wilmington, Delaware, after classified documents were found in his office and garage.
“Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents,” Representative James Comer said in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain dated Sunday.
Republicans have sought to compare the Biden records issue, which covers data from his tenure as vice president, with that of former President Donald Trump, who is facing a federal criminal investigation into how he handled secret documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
Comer said he would not seek visitor logs for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where an FBI search turned up more than 100 classified documents, some of them labeled top secret.
“I don’t feel we need to spend a lot of time on it because the Democrats have done it for the past six years,” he said in an interview.
Trump has announced that he will run for president again in 2024, with Biden set to be his Democratic opponent.
The Biden revelations came to light last week when his legal team announced that they had discovered secret documents relating to his stint as vice president in the Obama administration at his Delaware home. His lawyers on Saturday claimed to uncover five extra pages at his residence.
Some of the ten or so documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center think tank contained top secret information, CBS said on Sunday, citing an unidentified law enforcement source. The White House did not respond to the report. Bob Bauer, Biden’s lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment.
TRUMP VS. BIDEN DOCUMENT ISSUES
Republicans initiated a probe into the Justice Department’s handling of inappropriately held secret papers belonging to Biden on Friday. Comer’s committee is also looking into the matter.
In the Biden case, the president’s lawyers notified the National Archives and the Justice Department of the discovery of a small number of documents at a Washington think tank and later at Biden’s Wilmington home.
In Trump‘s case, the National Archives unsuccessfully attempted to retrieve all of the data he maintained after leaving the office for more than a year. When Trump ultimately surrendered 15 cartons of records in January 2022, authorities at the National Archives realized they included secret information.
After the case was brought to the Justice Department, Trump’s lawyers turned over further evidence from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and stated that there were no more records on the property.
That turned out to be incorrect. In the end, the FBI found an additional 13,000 documents from the estate, approximately 100 of which were marked classified.
House Democrats introduced the “Mar-a-Lago Act” in 2017 that would require Trump to regularly disclose visitors to his Florida home, but it was never voted on in the chamber or full Congress.
The outgoing head of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, said Congress should request an assessment from the US intelligence agency on whether any materials from Trump or Biden risked national security.
“I don’t think we can rule anything out without knowing additional details,” Schiff said.
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