The White House connected Monday said it does not support visitors logs for President Biden’s idiosyncratic residence successful Wilmington, Del., wherever his lawyers person discovered astatine slightest six documents with classified markings.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), president of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the White House implicit the play seeking an accounting of who whitethorn person had entree to the property. He called the substance “troubling,” penning that it had raised questions astir whether the president has “jeopardized our nationalist security.”
Ian Sams, spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, said successful a connection that, “like each President crossed decades of modern history, his idiosyncratic residence is personal. But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and contented of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, aft the erstwhile medication ended them.”
Biden’s lawyers archetypal discovered a “small number” of documents with classified markings successful November astatine the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, an institute successful Washington wherever Biden kept an bureau aft serving arsenic vice president. The president’s lawyers past searched his idiosyncratic residences successful Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Del., and recovered the further six documents this period astatine the Wilmington home.
The find of classified documents has created a governmental headache for Biden, who has said helium was “surprised” by the revelations and stressed that helium and his aides are cooperating afloat arsenic the Justice Department investigates. He has besides sought to gully a favoritism with erstwhile president Donald Trump, who ignored repeated authorities demands for the instrumentality of each classified documents that remained successful his possession aft leaving the White House, prompting a court-approved FBI hunt of his Mar-a-Lago Club and residence successful Palm Beach, Fla., past year.
Authorities say the FBI recovered much than 300 classified documents and thousands of nonclassified authorities materials from Mar-a-Lago. Agents recovered galore of those documents aft Trump’s squad assured national investigators that they had turned implicit everything they could find.
Biden’s squad says it voluntarily notified authorities upon the find of classified documents.
On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a peculiar counsel to analyse the handling of classified documents recovered astatine Biden’s erstwhile bureau and his Wilmington residence. Garland tapped Robert K. Hur, a elder authoritative astatine the Justice Department during the Trump administration, to pb the investigation. Hur’s assignment came aft Garland successful November named different peculiar counsel, Jack Smith, to lead a abstracted probe into the retention of classified documents astatine Trump’s residence.
Republicans who person sought to downplay Trump’s handling of classified documents person hammered Biden implicit the caller revelations.
“President Biden’s mishandling of classified materials raises the contented of whether helium has jeopardized our nationalist security,” Comer wrote successful his missive to the White House. “Without a database of individuals who person visited his residence, the American radical volition ne'er cognize who had entree to these highly delicate documents.”
On Saturday, Bob Bauer, the president’s idiosyncratic attorney, released a nationalist timeline of events regarding the find of classified documents astatine Biden’s idiosyncratic bureau and his Wilmington location successful an effort to show practice with the Justice Department’s investigation.