House GOP demand visitor logs in Biden classified docs case: ‘We have a lot of questions’ – National | 24CA News

Newly empowered House Republicans on Sunday demanded the White House flip over all info associated to its searches which have uncovered categorized paperwork at President Joe Biden’s dwelling and former workplace within the wake of extra information discovered at his Delaware residence.

“We have a lot of questions,” mentioned Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Comer, R-Ky., mentioned he needs to see all paperwork and communications associated to the searches by the Biden group, in addition to customer logs of the president’s dwelling in Wilmington, Delaware, from Jan. 20, 2021, to current. He mentioned the goal is to find out who might need had entry to categorized materials and the way the information received there.

The White House on Saturday mentioned it had found 5 extra pages of categorized paperwork at Biden’s dwelling on Thursday, the identical day a particular counsel was appointed to overview the matter.

In a letter Sunday to White House chief of employees Ron Klain, Comer criticized the searches by Biden representatives when the Justice Department was starting to analyze and mentioned Biden’s “mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security.” Comer demanded that the White House present all related info together with customer logs by the tip of the month.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Comer referred to Biden’s dwelling as a “crime scene” although he acknowledged that it was not clear whether or not legal guidelines had been damaged.

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“My concern is that the special counsel was called for, but yet hours after that we still had the president’s personal attorneys, who have no security clearance, still rummaging around the president’s residence, looking for things — I mean that would essentially be a crime scene, so to speak,” Comer mentioned.

While the U.S. Secret Service supplies safety on the president’s non-public residence, it doesn’t keep customer logs, company spokesman Anthony Guglielmi mentioned Sunday.

“We don’t independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence,” Guglielmi mentioned. He added that the company does display guests to the president’s properties however doesn’t keep information of these checks.

White House officers didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon whether or not Biden has independently maintained information of who has visited his residence.

Asked about Comer’s request for logs and communications concerning the seek for paperwork, White House spokesman Ian Sams responded: “I would simply refer you to what Congressman Comer himself told CNN this morning: `At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents to be honest with you.’ That says it all.”

In that CNN interview, Comer had added that House Republicans didn’t belief the Justice Department to offer the matter of Biden’s categorized paperwork an applicable stage of scrutiny. The House Judiciary Committee on Friday requested that Attorney General Merrick Garland flip over info associated to the invention of paperwork and Garland’s appointment of particular counsel Richard Hur to supervise the investigation.

White House officers “can say they’re being transparent, but it’s anything but,” the committee chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, instructed Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

White House lawyer Richard Sauber mentioned in a press release Saturday {that a} whole of six pages of categorized paperwork had been discovered from Biden’s time serving as vp within the Obama administration throughout a search of Biden’s non-public library. The White House had mentioned beforehand that solely a single web page was discovered there.

The newest disclosure was along with the invention of paperwork present in December in Biden’s storage and in November at his former workplaces on the Penn Biden Center in Washington.

Sauber mentioned that Biden’s private legal professionals, who didn’t have safety clearances, stopped their search after discovering the primary web page on Wednesday night. Sauber discovered the remaining materials Thursday, as he was facilitating their retrieval by Justice Department. Sauber didn’t clarify why the White House waited two days to offer an up to date accounting. The White House is already dealing with scrutiny for ready greater than two months to acknowledge the invention of the preliminary group of paperwork on the Biden workplace.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the highest Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, mentioned the Justice Department rightfully appointed particular counsels to “get to the bottom” of the Biden categorized paperwork matter in addition to in a separate investigation into the mishandling of categorized paperwork at former President Donald Trump’s non-public membership and residence in Florida.

But Raskin additionally careworn key variations between the 2 instances, together with that Biden’s group readily handed over paperwork to the National Archives in contrast with Trump’s repeated resistance to such requests.

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Special counsel to probe Biden paperwork case after extra categorized information discovered at dwelling

“We should keep a sense of proportion and measure about what we’re talking about,” Raskin instructed CNN.

Asked Sunday if his oversight committee would examine Trump’s dealing with of categorized paperwork as effectively, Comer demurred.

“There have been so many investigations of President Trump, I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump, because the Democrats have done that for the past six years,” he mentioned.

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Madhani reported from Wilmington, Delaware.

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