Biden docs: House GOP demands visitor logs, more files found
WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — The White House revealed over the weekend that five more pages of sensitive files were found at the president’s home in Delaware.
And while some Democrats have praised President Joe Biden for cooperating with the Department of Justice as a special counsel investigation is launched into the discovery of classified documents, some Democrats have called it embarrassing.
“And it’s an embarrassment, no doubt about it.,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. “Is there more to it? I doubt it, but we’ll find out from the special counsel as he goes about his business.”
And now, House Republicans in leadership aren’t taking the president’s lawyers at their word that they are being transparent.
“We have a lot of questions,” chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said.
Comer promised to investigate, saying he wants to see all documents and communications related to the searches by the Biden team, as well as visitor logs of the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, from Jan. 20, 2021, to the present. He said the aim is to determine who might have had access to classified material and how the records got there.
However, the White House confirmed to NewsNation that there are no visitor logs kept at Biden’s Wilmington home or private office — only for the White House.
“Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal. But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them,” the White House said in a statement to NewsNation.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Comer referred to Biden’s home as a “crime scene” though he acknowledged that it was not clear whether laws were broken.
Many want to determine how top-secret information from Biden’s time as vice president could have been compromised.
Comer has led the chorus of questions as to why the Biden administration didn’t come clean about the documents to the public when they were first discovered two months ago before the midterms.
The special counsel for the president said that as the president’s attorneys are finding documents with classified markings, they stop their searches and contact the proper authorities.
The statement reads, in part, “The president’s lawyers have acted immediately and voluntarily to provide the … documents to the archives and … to the DOJ. We have now publicly released specific details about the documents identified, how they were identified and where they were found. The appointment of the special counsel in this matter … means we will now refer specific questions to the special counsel’s office.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.