House Oversight Committee Launches Investigation into Classified Records at Biden’s Think Tank Office

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has opened an investigation into classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president that were discovered at a D.C. think tank affiliated with him.

The records were recovered on November 2 at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank that served as Biden’s private office from 2017 to 2019 after his time as vice president came to an end. U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch is reviewing the roughly ten records under the order of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) wrote a letter to White House counsel Stuart Delery on Tuesday expressing concern on behalf of the committee that Biden has “compromised (intelligence) sources and methods with his own mishandling of classified documents.” 

Comer requested that the White House supply all related documents and communications, including the classified documents at issue, by January 24. The letter also asks for a list of people who had access to the office space.

Comer also sent a letter to the National Archives on Tuesday saying the committee plans to investigate “whether there is a political bias” at the agency, citing “inconsistent treatment of recovering classified records held by former President Trump and President Biden.” Comer requested that the agency turn over related documents and communications within 14 days and that senior Archives officials offer testimony by January 17.

“It appears that it’s another cover-up,” Comer told CBS News on Tuesday. “And we just have a lot of questions with respect to how Biden’s been treated verses how Donald Trump was treated.”

“We simply want to know the same things we asked when Mar-a-Lago was raided,” Comer said. “Who has which documents? What level of classification are we talking about here? How many documents? And what was the process involved with making the decision to raid Mar-a-Lago, versus the decision to apparently do nothing with President Biden?”

The FBI raided former president Donald Trump’s personal residence at Mar-a-Lago in August as part of an investigation into allegations that he mishandled documents the government claimed as its property and that should have been delivered to the National Archives.

Biden previously said of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago: “How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible. And it just — totally irresponsible.

The documents recovered from Biden’s think tank were discovered in a locked closet by personal attorneys for Biden who were cleaning out the space, the White House said. The lawyers then informed the White House and White House counsel told the National Archives, which referred the matter to the Justice Department.

President Biden said Tuesday he had no knowledge of the documents being at his one-time office.

“Let me get rid of the easy one first,” Biden told reporters during the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City, where he is on a diplomatic trip to meet with Mexican and Canadian leaders. “People know I take classified documents and classified information seriously,” he said, the Associated Press reported.

“They did what they should have done. They immediately called the archives . . . turned them over to the archives, and I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office,” Biden said. “But I don’t know what’s in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were.”