The White House and Secret Service on Monday claimed no visitor logs exist from President Joe Biden’s Delaware residence, where multiple classified documents were unearthed by the president’s personal attorneys.
The statements were in response to House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer’s (R-KY) request for disclosure of the logs Sunday.
“Given the serious national security implications, the White House must provide the Wilmington residence’s visitor log,” Comer wrote to the White House. “It is troubling that classified documents have been improperly stored at the home of President Biden for at least six years, raising questions about who may have reviewed or had access to classified information.”
Republicans are concerned Biden’s mishandling of classified documents presents the likelihood that classified materials could have landed in the hands of America’s adversaries. Between the classified documents retrieved from the Biden Penn Center and the documents retrieved from Biden’s residence in Delaware on Thursday, the total number of classified documents Biden stashed is now about 25 — some of which are top secret.
While Biden’s Secret Service protects the president’s Delaware home, agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said on Sunday it does not maintain visitor logs of the residence, though it does screen visitors, according to the Associated Press.
“We don’t independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence,” Guglielmi said.
The White House confirmed to the AP that Biden has failed to keep records of who visited his home. “Like every President in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” White House spokesman Ian Sams stated.
Comer, who is spearheading one of the two House probes into the matter, has also raised a second question of why Biden’s personal attorneys were looking for documents at the residence after a special counsel was appointed. The White House has remained silent on the issue.
“The Committee is also concerned White House aides and President Biden’s personal attorneys searched the Wilmington residence knowing that the Department of Justice was already investigating the matter,” Comer wrote:
On January 5, 2023, Mr. Lausch notified the Attorney General that a special counsel was warranted. That notification still did not dissuade the President’s attorneys from accessing his residence on January 11, 2022, or White House counsel from accessing his residence on January 12, 2022. On January 12, 2022, the Attorney General announced the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Hur. Nonetheless, President Biden has returned to Delaware this weekend without any reported law enforcement ever conducting an independent search for classified materials.
The White House’s refusal to explain why Biden’s personal attorneys were at the residence comes as the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has purveyed a false timeline of events. She falsely claimed Thursday that the search for Biden’s classified documents was completed Wednesday night. That timeline was contradicted Saturday when the White House admitted five more documents had been found Thursday.
The White House chaos has been exacerbated by the administration’s refusal to be transparent and forthcoming. The oversight committee raised concerns Saturday that the White House, National Archives, and the Justice Department have all failed to inform Congress about the violation despite Comer’s repeated requests.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.