House GOP seeks Biden visitor logs in classified documents inquiry

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the White House on Sunday demanding visitor logs for President Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, residence, where Biden aides found classified documents from his time as former President Barack Obama's vice president.

"Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents," Comer said in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Comer said his committee is not asking for visitor logs from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where FBI agents have seized more than 100 classified documents, because Democrats have been looking into Trump for years.

Republicans are hoping to get their hands on visitor logs from Jan. 20, 2021, to present, notes The Associated Press. But secret service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said Sunday that the agency does not keep a record of those who visit Biden's private home, though it does screen guests and provide security.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"We don't independently maintain our own visitor logs because it's a private residence," Guglielmi said.

"Like every president in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal," added White House spokesperson Ian Sams. "But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them."

The administration revealed Saturday that additional pages of materials had been recovered at Biden's Delaware home on Thursday. Prior to that, documents were discovered at the president's Washington, D.C., think tank in November, and then again at his private residence in December. The administration has maintained that it is cooperating with both the National Archives and the Justice Department in investigating the matter.