House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) reprimanded President Joe Biden’s “mishandling” of classified documents and warned that “oversight is coming” Saturday.
Biden was rocked this week by a slow trickle of revelations that his associates recovered documents with classified markings from his vice presidential days late last year. Comer tore into the White House and the other government agencies involved for a lack of transparency in the matter, which he decried as “alarming.”
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“President Biden’s three strikes against transparency will be met with swift congressional oversight,” Comer said in a statement Saturday. “The Biden White House’s secrecy in this matter is alarming. Equally alarming is the fact that Biden aides were combing through documents knowing there would be a Special Counsel appointed. Many questions need to be answered but one thing is certain: oversight is coming.”
Comer’s powerful investigative committee has already begun an inquiry into the matter alongside the House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). But in his statement, he elaborated on some of his concerns with the White House, the National Archives, and the Justice Department for not informing Congress of the matter on a timely basis.
“The White House, the National Archives, and the Justice Department failed to promptly inform Congress and the American people about mishandled classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president. We first learned about the Penn Biden Center classified documents months after they were found in an unsecure closet,” he said.
“Now days later, we are learning that there are more documents at the Wilmington residence. Are there more classified documents to be found?” he added.
News of the classified discovery first broke this week when reports revealed that on Nov. 2, about 10 documents with classified markings featuring intelligence about Iran, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom dated from 2013 to 2016 were discovered at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a foreign policy-focused think tank in Washington. The White House later confirmed the reports.
Then reports surfaced that Biden’s team informed the DOJ on Dec. 20 that it unearthed fewer than 10 files in his Wilmington, Delaware, garage near his prized 1967 Corvette Stingray. Finally, on Saturday, the White House confirmed that six additional documents with classified markings were retrieved from Biden’s Wilmington residence this week.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to examine the matter. Biden has tapped former Obama administration official and lawyer Bob Bauer to help manage his interactions with the inquiry. He has also maintained that he is “cooperating fully” with federal authorities.
