When the FBI searched President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, nearly two weeks ago and recovered a number of classified documents he had retained without authorization, the agents also reportedly seized a number of handwritten notes and notebooks belonging to the former vice president of the Obama administration.
Now a top House Republican, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY), has said it is of the “utmost importance” for investigators to determine whether those notebooks also contained classified information that Biden should not have been in possession of, the Conservative Brief reported.
Comer and other House Republicans have already made it clear that, separate and apart from the FBI and Justice Department’s probes, the GOP-led House and its relevant committees fully intend to probe this matter on their own on behalf of the American people.
Handwritten notebooks seized from Biden home
NBC News reported last week that, per an unnamed source said to be “familiar” with the matter, among the documents marked as classified found at President Biden’s Wilmington home and seized by investigators were also an undisclosed but “large” number of notebooks containing both personal and official handwritten notes from Biden’s time as vice president.
The notebooks themselves were not marked as classified, but some of the pages likely contained classified information, while still other pages that didn’t contain classified information nonetheless may contain official government business covered by the Presidential Records Act and, as such, should have been stored with the National Archives instead of Biden’s garage in Delaware.
Neither the White House, Biden’s legal team, the DOJ, nor the FBI responded to requests for comment, save for references to prior statements made.
The discovery and seizure of the notebooks, according to NBC News, “raises questions about whether he appropriately followed procedures for preserving presidential records. It also raises questions about whether the notebooks are considered personal or official, and how other vice presidents and presidents who kept similar notebooks while in office have handled theirs.”
“Nothing” about Biden’s mishandling of classified documents “is normal”
On Monday, Rep. Comer appeared on “Fox & Friends First” to discuss the latest development in President Biden’s classified documents scandal that seemingly grows worse with damning new revelations every few days or so.
“Nothing that Joe Biden’s done with respect to mishandling these classified documents is normal,” Comer said. “Take into consideration that he’s also being investigated for influence peddling with our adversaries around the world, and it’s even more concerning.”
“Look, more information comes out every day where his son, especially, as well as his two brothers, have had shady business dealings with our adversaries around the world,” he continued, “and part of what they would do when they would make a pitch to these shady characters in these foreign countries is prove to them that they actually had direct access to their brother and that they had direct access to people at the highest levels of our federal government.”
“So 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, and that’s why this investigation is of the utmost importance for the United States Congress as well as the American people,” the Kentucky congressman added.
Laptop contains “significant evidence” of “influence-peddling” that implicates Biden
In that same interview, Rep. Comer also countered criticism of his committee’s nascent investigation into Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, not to mention Big Tech’s efforts to censor and suppress information about the laptop, as being less about the president’s son or Big Tech and more about the potential corruption of the president himself.
President Biden’s lack of transparency regarding mishandling classified docs is NOT normal. This investigation continues to show more and more signs of an influence peddling operation. @GOPoversight will provide answers for the American people. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/hTV1hAjhcM
— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) January 30, 2023
“This is an investigation of Joe Biden,” Comer said. “The laptop happens to contain a significant amount of evidence that would not only implicate the Biden family in influence-peddling but it would also implicate the president of the United States.”
