GOP leaders blast Biden over classified documents at Penn Biden Center: president ‘must be held accountable’

FIRST ON FOX: Republican congressional leaders blasted President Biden over the classified documents found at his Washington, D.C., think tank.

GOP leadership sounded off on the new revelations, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., telling Fox News Digital on Tuesday that he believes the developments illustrate a media “double standard” favoring Democrats.

MCCARTHY REACTS TO CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS DISCOVERED FROM BIDEN’S TIME AS VP: DEMS ‘OVERPLAYED THEIR HAND’

GOP leadership sounded off on the new revelations that President Biden, while leaving the vice presidency six years ago, took classified documents to the Penn Biden Center in the nation’s capital.
(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“The kid glove treatment President Biden is receiving after being caught with classified documents for over six years after he left as Vice President demonstrates the double standard that exists in the press between Democrats and Republicans,” Scalise said.

The newly-minted House majority leader also brought up the raid on former President Trump 

“For years, when President Biden left office, it looks like he took classified documents with him, and he was very critical of President Trump,” Scalise told reporters.

"For years, when President Biden left office, it looks like he took classified documents with him, and he was very critical of President Trump," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters.
(Fox News)

“So if then-Vice President Biden took classified documents with him and held them for years, and criticized former President Trump during that same time that he had those classified documents, and only after it was uncovered, did he turn them back,” Scalise said.

House Republicans Conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York also torched the president, saying that Americans don’t trust his Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ) and that Biden and the department “must be held accountable.”

“Where is the FBI raid on the Joe Biden crime family after the revelations that he stole classified materials while serving as Vice President and stored these documents at Biden’s ‘think tank’ that has received over $50 million in Chinese gifts?” Stefanik asked in a statement to Fox News Digital.

"Where is the FBI raid on the Joe Biden crime family after the revelations that he stole classified materials while serving as Vice President and stored these documents at Biden’s ‘think tank’ that has received over $50 million in Chinese gifts?" House Republican Conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York asked in a statement to Fox News Digital.
(The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“The American people do not trust Joe Biden’s FBI and Department of Justice who have consistently tipped the scale of justice to fulfill their political ambitions and attack their political opponents,” she continued. “Joe Biden and his corrupt DOJ must be held accountable.”

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., told Fox News Digital that there “can be no double standard.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters on Monday night that Democrats “overplayed their hand” in the handling of the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago in light of the Biden document revelations.

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., told Fox News Digital that there "can be no double standard."
(Photo courtesy of Rep. Scott’s office)

“I think from … the same point that the Dems overplayed their hand on the Mar-a-Lago … just a proof of that,” McCarthy responded Monday evening to a reporter’s question.

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A “small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered at the Penn Biden Center by the president’s personal attorneys on Nov. 2, according to Richard Saubel, special counsel to the White House.

The attorneys found the documents in a locked closet while preparing to vacate office space at the center, which the president used from mid-2017 until he began the 2020 campaign.

Fox News Digital’s Brianna Herlihy contributed reporting.