Share this @internewscast.com
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Republicans will ask for visitor logs from former Vice President Mike Pence’s $1.9 million Indiana home after classified documents were discovered at his residence.
‘We’re going to ask for those for Pence, we’re going to treat Pence exactly the same way that we’re treating Joe Biden,’ Comer said during an interview Tuesday with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
Collins had asked the Kentucky Republican if he planned to ask for visitor logs from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, having said that he wanted those from Democratic President Joe Biden’s Wilmington home.
Classified documents were found at Pence, Biden and Trump’s homes.
‘There’s an investigation of that, there’s a special counsel looking into everything at Mar-a-Lago,’ Comer answered.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Tuesday on CNN that Republicans will ask for visitor logs from former Vice President Mike Pence’s $1.9 million Indiana home after classified documents were discovered at his residence
The FBI is expected to search former Vice President Mike Pence’s Carmel, Indiana home in a ‘matter of days,’ NBC News reported Monday, as House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said his panel would request visitor logs from the ex-veep
Last month, lawyers for former Vice President Mike Pence disclosed that a handful of classified documents were found at his Indiana home. It was searched after documents were found at the homes of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden
Collins pointed out that a special counsel had been assigned by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the Biden classified documents case as well.
‘Well, pardon me for not having as much confidence in this special counsel, appointed by Merrick Garland, on Joe Biden,’ Comer responded.
Collins noted that the Trump special counsel was also selected by Garland, a Biden appointee.
‘I’m against both special counsels,’ Comer then said. ‘The special counsels never materialize, they take forever, they operate behind closed doors, there’s no transparency. I believe that our Oversight Committee or Congressional investigative committees can do much better work in a transparent setting and do it quicker than special counsels.’
Comer also said that his committee was investigating Biden over ‘influence peddling,’ suggesting the classified documents discovered ‘may have been part of the business model with the president’s brother and the president’s son’ – though admitting to Collins there’s no evidence of that.
‘We have evidence that they’ve influence peddled,’ he said. ‘We don’t have any evidence of the classified documents, but we’re investigating that.’
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins (right) pressed House Oversight Chair James Comer (left) on why his committee was treating former President Donald Trump differently than President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence
On Monday, Biden said he shouldn’t be taking heat for mishandling classified documents.
‘The answer is no, wait until you get the whole report,’ he told a reporter during a quick Q&A session on the South Lawn.
Earlier in the day, NBC News reported that the FBI would search Pence’s Indiana home for more documents ‘in a matter of days.’
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that there would be a search of the $1.9 million Carmel, Indiana home, with CNN additionally reporting that Pence’s office would be fished through as well.
Pence’s team did not believe additional documents were in his archives, CNN reported.
Last month, Pence’s lawyers voluntarily disclosed that documents with classified markings were discovered at the ex-veep’s home.
The documents were found by one of Pence’s lawyers, who had been tasked to look through his papers at the vice president’s request, out of the abundance of caution after the Biden and Trump discoveries.
They were located on January 16, with Pence’s lawyer Greg Jacob writing a letter and informing the National Archives of the discovery on January 18.
Jacob asked a top Archives official for help ‘collecting and transferring to the custody of the National Archives an additional set of Vice Presidential records.’
‘The additional records appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former Vice President at the end of the last Administration,’ Jacob said.
‘Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence,’ the lawyer added.
FBI agents came to collect the documents on January 19 – but haven’t sifted through Pence’s papers on their own yet.
Sources told CNN that the documents were of a lesser classification than the top-secret papers found at Biden’s Delaware home and Washington, D.C. office and the more than 300 files found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
The network reported that the documents were background briefing materials for foreign trips.
Pence gave Biden some political cover with the admission that he had also taken classified documents home.
Now some of the narrative is whether there’s an overclassification problem in Washington and if departing presidents and vice presidents need to follow better protocols when packing up.
Last week, CBS News reported that Pence’s aides didn’t start packing up his office until after January 6, because Trump insisted it look like everyone was sticking around for a second term, as he contested the election results by spreading false voter fraud claims.
For weeks, the Biden White House has been under fire for keeping the initial discovery of classified documents at the president’s former D.C. think tank office quiet until after the midterm elections.
After that, additional documents were found at his Wilmington residence.
On Wednesday, the FBI searched the president’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware vacation home.
No classified documents were found.
New House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said Tuesday that the National Archives was stopped from putting out a press release announcing the discovery of documents at the Biden think tank, with just days to go before the midterms.
Republicans ended up having an underwhelming performance in the November elections, squeaking out a narrow majority in the House, with Democrats retaining control of the Senate.
On Sean Hannity’s Tuesday night program, Comer claimed that either the White House or Attorney General Merrick Garland interfered – with Democrats getting a political benefit.
‘There are only two people that could have given those orders, and that’s either the Department of Justice with Merrick Garland or the White House with Joe Biden,’ the Kentucky Republican said. ‘So, it shows right there that this Department of Justice and this White House is interfering with this.’
Comer made the comments after his panel interviewed the National Archives’ general counsel Gary Stern.
Stern told Oversight Committee members that he couldn’t tell them who gave the order not to release a statement.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has argued that the Biden White House did the right thing by immediately flagging the discovery of documents to the National Archives.
However, the administration did not confirm the discovery to the American people, until after it was reported by CBS News.
Republicans, including Pence, have decried the ‘double standard’ of Biden being able to hand over his documents, while Trump’s Florida home and club were raided.
In a January 10 radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, Pence called the Mar-a-Lago raid a ‘massive overreach’ and a ‘massive overreaction.’
‘But having now created that standard and now abandoned that standard when the current president of the United States is found to have had classified documents in his possession after leaving office, I think it just, I have no words right now. It’s just incredibly frustrating to me,’ Pence said.
Pence has continued to defend Trump despite the two men having a falling out over Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The former vice president is also widely expected to launch is own 2024 White House bid.
Biden’s allies have pointed out that Trump lied about still having documents in his possession while the National Archives was trying to get them back.
Garland appointed two special counsels to oversee the investigation into Trump and Biden.
