Republicans want Biden home visitor logs

By Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The Republican chairman on the House Oversight Committee, Sunday, demanded visitor logs from President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home after classified documents were found in Biden’s garage and office.

“Without a complete list of those who have visited his home, the American people won’t know who had access,” James Comer, Representative of Massachusetts, wrote to Ron Klain, White House Chief of Staff. The letter was dated Sunday.

Republicans tried to make a comparison between the Biden documents case and that of Donald Trump’s former president. Trump is currently under federal criminal investigation for how he handled classified information after leaving the White House. Legal experts disagree and say that there are striking differences between the cases.

Comer stated that he would not request visitor logs for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, where more than 100 classified documents were discovered in an FBI search.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, he stated that “I don’t feel like we have to spend a lot of time” because Democrats have done this for the past six-years.

Trump announced that he will run for the presidency again in 2024 with Biden as his likely Democratic opponent.

After his legal team claimed it found classified documents related to his time in the Obama administration at Biden’s Delaware home, the Biden disclosures were made public last week. On Saturday, his lawyers reported that five more pages were found at his house.

The U.S. presidents are not required to disclose guests at their White House or home. The Biden administration made it possible to disclose official guests to White House in May 2021. This practice had been suspended by Donald Trump in 2017, shortly after his election.

TRUMP VS. BIDEN DOCUMENT ISSUES

The U.S. House of Representatives opened an investigation Friday into how the Justice Department handled classified documents Biden had improperly stored. The case is currently being investigated by the Comer committee.

Trump’s mishandling of classified documents following his presidency is the subject of a federal criminal investigation.

The Biden case involved the president’s legal team informing the National Archives and Justice Department of the discovery of a few documents at a Washington think tank and then at Biden’s Wilmington residence.

Trump’s case was unique in that the National Archives attempted to retrieve all records he had retained for over a year, but failed. Archives officials discovered classified material in the 15 boxes Trump finally returned in January 2022.

After the matter was referred by the Justice Department, Trump’s lawyers gave more material from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago house and stated that there were no additional documents.

This was false. The FBI was able to recover an additional 13,000 documents from the estate, of which about 100 were classified.

The “Mar-a-Lago Act”, which would have required Trump to disclose his Florida home to visitors, was introduced by House Democrats in 2017. It was not voted on in either the chamber or the full Congress.

Adam Schiff, a Democratic Representative and the former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, stated that Congress should ask the U.S. intelligence agency to assess whether any documents from Trump, or Biden, could jeopardize national security.

Schiff said that “I don’t believe we can exclude the possibility” without learning more about the facts on ABC’s “This Week.”

(Reporting and editing by Doinachiacu; Editing by Heather Timmons & Lisa Shumaker