Paging Merrick Garland: This douche is a walking national security violation.
Chinatown. Wonder if the CCP knew.
Biden’s former assistant contradicted White House claims that classified documents discovered at Biden’s post-vice presidency DC office this past November were in a “locked closet” — and revealed the White House sought to quietly retrieve the papers, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Tuesday.
Comer (R-Ky.) added in a statement that Chung, who sat for an interview with the panel, “provided startling information that undermines the Biden White House’s narrative on the matter.”
“Today we learned that when Joe Biden left the vice presidency, boxes containing classified documents, vice presidential records, and other items were stored in three different locations around the Washington, DC, area, including an office near the White House, an office in Chinatown, and eventually the Penn Biden Center,” the lawmaker said.
“At some point, the boxes containing classified materials were transported by personal vehicles to an office location,” Comer went on.
“The boxes were not in a ‘locked closet’ at the Penn Biden Center and remained accessible to Penn Biden employees as well as potentially others with access to the office space. We need to find out who had access to these documents.”
The Penn Biden Center was set up by the University of Pennsylvania after Biden left the vice presidency in 2017.
Its offices at the foot of Capitol Hill came with scenic views and much of the office space was partitioned by glass walls, according to photos available online.
Comer said Chung’s testimony also revealed a previously unknown detail: That then-White House Counsel Dana Remus sought to recover documents from the Penn Biden Center office in May 2022, months before the reported early November discovery of the records by the president’s lawyers.
“This story does not begin in November 2022, as represented by President Biden’s attorney,” Comer said.
“In the coming days, the Oversight Committee will follow up with persons of interest in this investigation.”
Comer made the revelations just hours after former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 New York state charges of falsifying business records when he paid hush money to two women alleging affairs during the 2016 campaign.
The case is the first time in US history that a former president was charged with a crime — a precedent that Republicans say Biden and his Democratic allies may come to regret.
Special counsel Robert Hur is already investigating whether Biden or anyone in his orbit illegally mishandled classified records.
……Biden’s lawyers say they initially found classified documents on Nov. 2 while clearing out his former office at the Penn Biden Center.
Some of them reportedly were marked “top secret” and pertained to Iran and Ukraine.
The discovery — just six days before the midterm elections — was kept quiet, even though Trump’s alleged mishandling of records was a major election issue following an Aug. 8 FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Additional classified documents were found on Dec. 20 in Biden’s Wilmington garage, followed by a series of additional discoveries at the home — including by the FBI, which also searched Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., vacation home and left with written notes.
Biden in September chided Trump as “irresponsible” for retaining classified documents at his Florida compound, which is guarded by the Secret Service — unlike Biden’s Wilmington home and DC office following his vice presidency.
Some of the classified records found by the FBI reportedly date to Biden’s time as a senator.
Biden has sought to downplay the controversy, saying in a Feb. 8 PBS interview, “The best of my knowledge, the kind of things they picked up are things that — from 1974, stray papers.”
……Although the White House said that searches for records were complete, additional documents were found by Biden’s lawyers — and a FBI search found six more items with classification markings.
First son Hunter Biden, who is under federal investigation for possible tax fraud, money laundering and illegal foreign lobbying, frequently visited the Wilmington home, according to records from his former laptop, and listed the home as his own residence on a 2018 background check form.
Boxes of classified documents went from the White House to UPenn, Boston, Chinatown, and Biden’s garage. Some of those documents are dated from his time as Senator. In spite of his own national security violations and breaking the law, he ordered a raid on Mar a Lago. Not only was he refusing to cooperate, but he had his lawyers trying to bury the evidence before the midterms. That is obstruction and tampering with evidence.
The DOJ knew about Biden’s feckless handling of classified material, but they and the FBI agreed to cover it up.
Merrick Garland’s minions opted against having FBI agents oversee a search by Biden’s lawyers for classified documents at his private homes, and ultimately left the matter to Biden’s own attorneys.
This was a coordinated coverup from the second they were discovered.
By the way: Hunter Biden had access to documents at Joe’s house and some of them were used as leverage in a deal with Ukraine.
Contrast this with the FBI’s dog and pony show at Mar-a-Lago. They broke into a safe which was an authorized SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) and displayed the documents on the floor as if that’s where they were found. Trump is allowed to have classified documents as long as they are secured and stored appropriately; they were. He has the authority to declassify the documents he possessed.
The raid was a prime example of selective politicized targeting. It’s simply a tactic to prevent President Trump from running for office in 2024. Don’t think for one second that if they had a basket full of bombshells that they wouldn’t be holding daily press conferences, squeezing all the notoriety out of it they could. It’s political theater.
Trump keeping documents in a secured room locked with an FBI-requested padlock, at a heavily guarded private residence is “irresponsible,” but Biden keeping documents he wasn’t authorized to possess, in totally unsecure areas like a university office and his home garage, is okay.
The classified documents Biden hid from everyone, including the National Archives, have been there since 2017. He absconded with those them as Vice President, without the authority to possess or declassify them.
President Trump gets the heavy handed home invasion, while Biden gets lawyers.