The House Oversight chairman called for reform on how classified documents are handled as President Biden and former President Donald Trump face special counsel investigations by the Department of Justice into materials found at their personal homes.
“We have to reform the way that documents are boxed up when they leave the president and vice president’s office and follow them into the private sector,” said Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.
Comer made the remarks during an appearance before the National Press Club Monday morning where he spoke on some of the upcoming investigatory objectives of the House Oversight Committee. Comer pointed to border security, prescription drug costs and the Biden family’s foreign business dealings as top priorities in the GOP-controlled chamber.
Comer hopes that the process for handling classified documents can be resolved through a “bipartisan legislative fix.”
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Rep. James Comer is the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee in the GOP majority.
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“All I know is there’s a problem when you have two special counsels investigating roughly the same thing, supposedly,” Comer went on. “There’s a problem, and we need to fix the problem.”
Throughout January, reports surfaced that Biden turned over four separate batches of classified documents found among his personal possessions in his Wilmington, Delaware, home and office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. Last year, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, was subject to a controversial FBI raid that uncovered documents marked classified.
Not long after, dozens of classified documents were discovered in former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home. Pence’s legal team handed over the classified records to the National Archives, which later notified the FBI, per standard procedure.
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(President Biden and former President Trump both face special counsel investigations into their handling of classified documents.)
In an appearance on “Fox & Friends First” Monday morning, Comer said Biden’s mishandling of classified documents is of “utmost importance” to Congress.
“Nothing that Joe Biden’s done with respect to mishandling these classified documents is normal,” Comer went on.
“When we learned that Joe Biden had classified documents from all over the place, and that Hunter Biden especially lived in his house where he had those classified documents, we became extra concerned.”
Hunter Biden’s laptop was at the center of a Big Tech censorship campaign in 2020.
(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
The Kentucky Republican plans to ask the National Archives for their opinion on potential reforms, and if recent document violations from Biden or Trump were rooted in malice or ineptitude.
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The House Oversight Committee will be speaking with the National Archives Tuesday during a closed deposition.