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The National Archives was prevented from notifying the public that classified documents were found in President Joe Biden’s think tank in November, raising questions about who prevented the information from getting out.
Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer posed the question Tuesday night, claiming the only two entities that could give the Files warrant are the White House and the Justice Department, putting the onus on Biden. or Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Despite Biden’s team claiming it has been “transparent” about the classified documents scandal, new details emerged Tuesday that the FBI searched his former offices after initial materials were found.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (pictured) said Tuesday the National Archives was unable to release a prepared statement on the discovery of classified documents at Joe Biden’s think tank in Washington DC in November.
Documents with classified marks were found at Biden’s think tank in Washington, DC, just days before the 2022 midterm election.
The National Archives prepared a press release to notify the public of the discovery, but was prevented from issuing the statement, Comer revealed.
“There are only two people who could have given those orders, and that is the Justice Department with Merrick Garland or the White House with Joe Biden,” the Kentucky Republican told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday night.
“So there it shows that this Department of Justice and this White House are interfering with this,” he added.
The latest revelation comes after Comer’s panel conducted a lengthy interview with National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) General Counsel Gary Stern.
He also informed the Vigilance Committee that he could not tell them who gave the order not to publish the statement.
Comer noted another double standard in the classified documents process between the case involving Biden and the one involving former President Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago residence was raided by the FBI in August.
“If you go to the National Archives website, there are pages and pages of press releases and information about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago and Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents,” Comer said. “But there is nothing on the website about Joe Biden.”
New information also emerged on Tuesday about the Biden case indicating that the discovery of documents was not as cooperative a process as previously indicated.
FBI investigators searched the DC office of Biden’s think tank days after the president’s attorney identified classified material there.
New revelations also emerged Tuesday that FBI agents searched Penn Biden’s office for classified material in November, a previously unknown detail despite the administration’s insistence on “transparency” throughout the process.
The White House and Justice Department did not disclose the search, which was reported by CBS Newsdespite the White House’s claim of “transparency” about continued discoveries of classified material.
It was not immediately known if any additional documents marked as classified were discovered during the search, which took place in mid-November.
On November 2, days before the midterm elections, a lawyer for Biden discovered 10 documents marked “classified,” then contacted the National Archives, which alerted the Justice Department.
News of the FBI search comes as the Biden administration faces renewed pressure from Democrats to reveal the contents of classified material found at his home and office.
A Jan. 14 statement from Biden’s attorney Bob Bauer did not acknowledge the government search, only noting the “government investigation, including taking possession of any documents and reviewing any surrounding material for further review and context.” “.
A Jan. 12 statement from White House counsel Richard Sauber noted that the president’s attorneys and the DOJ were “closely coordinating” the search for the president’s home in Wilmington.
‘Following the discovery of government documents at the Penn Biden Center in November 2022, and in close coordination with the Department of Justice, the president’s lawyers have searched the president’s residences in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, the other locations where find files from his Vice-Presidential office could have been dispatched during the 2017 transition, Sauber said in a statement. That search turned up classified materials in a garage and one in an adjacent room.
On Friday, January 20, the FBI searched Biden’s Wilmington home and discovered additional classified material.
Top Republicans have called on the government to search the president’s beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware, where Biden’s team says no classified documents were uncovered in their own search.
The White House had responded to questions last week about whether such a search could happen this past weekend, when Biden was at Camp David and in Wilmington, but there is no indication that it happened.
“There has been no limit to transparency,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this month during a particularly spirited White House press conference.
The repeated disclosures come after months of reporting on Donald Trump’s own resistance to government demands to return documents, and the FBI’s discovery under a Mar-a-Lago search warrant of hundreds of documents marked as “classified”.
The search of the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC came days after the discovery of the initial document.
The FBI conducted a search of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified materials were discovered in a garage and a private library.
The same garage houses Biden’s classic Corvette Stingray, along with some boxes and a lampshade.
The news broke when Biden visited New York to promote infrastructure improvements.
The president has faced repeated questions about the documents, sometimes berating reporters, sometimes defending his conduct.
Former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod is among prominent Democrats who have criticized the Biden White House for a lack of transparency, in an op-ed in which he blamed the team for violating a crisis communications mantra to ‘fully disclose all the facts’ as soon as possible.
Bauer’s statement following the Wilmington search this month made it clear that the Justice Department was involved in the search.
DOJ “took possession of materials it deemed to be within the scope of its investigation, including six items consisting of documents with classification marks and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and others from his tenure as vice president,” Bauer said in a statement at the time. He said investigators also took handwritten notes from Biden’s time as vice president.