The House Oversight Committee on Monday formally requested that Special Counsel Robert Hur investigate President Joe Biden for any potential profiteering off of classified documents that were illegally procured and stored in insecure facilities while vice president.
The Oversight Committee posted the letter to Hur on the social media platform X.
?BREAKING?
We are investigating whether classified documents President Biden was caught mishandling included sensitive information related to specific countries involved in his family’s foreign business schemes that brought in millions for the Bidens.@RepJamesComer is… pic.twitter.com/9m6f4u1kwg
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) October 16, 2023
“We are investigating whether classified documents President Biden was caught mishandling included sensitive information related to specific countries involved in his family’s foreign business schemes that brought in millions for the Bidens,” the committee wrote.
“[Chair] Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is calling on Special Counsel Robert Hur to provide more information,” the release added.
The committee’s letter to Robert Hur pertains in particular to the illegal storage of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center, where Joe Biden had surreptitiously retained documents after leaving the office of the vice presidency.
“The Committee on Oversight and Accountability (“Committee” or “Oversight Committee”) is investigating President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. The Committee has developed significant evidence regarding President Biden’s retention of classified materials at Penn Biden Center,” the letter states.
“Witness testimony, emails, and text messages establish there were at least five current and former White House employees who coordinated accessing boxes, which contained classified documents, between 2021 and October 2022,” the letter continued. “The Committee is concerned as to why President Biden has not been fully transparent about the White House’s involvement in accessing these materials prior to November 2, 2022.”
“As such, we requested certain documents and transcribed interviews from the White House,” the letter added.
The Oversight Committee then noted Hur’s recent reported interview of President Biden.
“Recent reports indicate you recently interviewed President Biden and other individuals involved in this matter, and the Committee now seeks information from your office to further our investigation,” the letter stated. “As detailed in the Oversight Committee’s bank memoranda and Impeachment Inquiry Memorandum, evidence suggests President Biden may have used certain members of his family-particularly his son, Hunter Biden-to accumulate millions of dollars from foreign individuals and entities for the benefit of his family and himself.”
“Indeed, the Biden family received millions of dollars from foreign sources while President Biden served in public office and afterwards,” the committee notes. “If any of the classified documents mishandled by President Biden involved countries or individuals that had financial dealings with Biden family members or their related companies, the Committee needs access to that information to evaluate whether our national security has been compromised.”
The Oversight Committee then listed a number of the countries where the Biden family had financial dealings.
“As you may be aware, Biden family members, their business associates, and their related companies received significant payments from individuals and companies in China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania,” the letter states. “In addition, other evidence recently released by the Ways and Means Committee identified over 20 different countries with ties to the Biden family’s influence peddling schemes.”
The House committee then provided details on the staff members that were allegedly involved in the procurement and storage of the classified documents. Importantly, the committee alleges the White House had prior knowledge of the classified documents issue prior to November 2, 2022, when the documents were originally reported to have been “discovered.”
“President Biden’s retention of certain classified documents begs the question as to why he kept these particular materials. Of the many classified documents he reviewed over his lengthy career, why did President Biden keep these specific documents in his home and office?” the committee asks. “The sensitive nature of the information contained in the documents may answer that question for the Committee, which is why we seek to review those materials.”
“There is also no reasonable explanation to date as to why five White House employees (Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams, Annie Tomasini, and an unidentified employee), a Department of Defense employee (Kathy Chung), and private attorneys (Bob Bauer and Patrick Moore) were tasked with obtaining what were purportedly personal documents not subject to the Presidential Records Act,” the letter added. “The evidence shows the White House was concerned about potential document retention issues prior to November 2, 2022, and used significant government resources to obtain the materials.”
“The Committee seeks to further understand why President Biden retained certain classified documents, if such information related to any of his family’s foreign business interactions, and why so many White House officials were involved in obtaining these materials,” the letter summarized.
Legal analyst Jonathan Turley, in a new column, explains why this is a big problem for Joe Biden’s defense.
“[Hur] may have growing evidence that accounts offered by the White House over the discovery of the documents are false. The new evidence could prove transformative, not only for the criminal but the impeachment investigation of the president.”
“This week, the House Oversight Committee released a new timeline on the discovery of classified documents in various locations associated with Biden. From the outset, many of us flagged problems with the account that had been given by Biden, who insisted that he had no knowledge or involvement in the removal or use of the documents.”
Turley stipulates that Special Counsel Robert Hur, a man who has been seldom seen since his appointment to investigate Joe Biden, is a “neutron prosecutor” devoid of the capacity to charge the sitting president with criminal violations.
The George Washington University law professor and constitutional scholar expanded on why this development is an issue for the Biden administration’s narrative on the classified documents issue.
The most glaring problem is that, after they were removed at the end of his term as vice president, the documents were repeatedly moved and divided up. Some were found in the Penn Center office used by Biden in Washington, D.C. Others were found in his garage and reportedly in his library.
Biden made clear from the beginning that he expected the investigation to be perfunctory and brief. He publicly declared that he has “no regrets” over his own conduct and told the public that the documents investigation would soon peter out when it determined that “there is no ‘there’ there.”
Now, however, it appears that a critical claim by the White House in the scandal may not only be false, but was knowingly false at the time it was made. The White House and Biden’s counsel have long maintained that, as soon as documents were discovered in the D.C. office, they notified the national archives. Many asked why they did not call the FBI, but the White House has at least maintained that, unlike Trump, they took immediate action to notify authorities.
In addition to accumulating evidence that the White House knowingly made false statements about the classified documents, there are potential issues about obstruction of justice stemming to withholding evidence from investigators.
The committee now alleges that the White House “omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating among multiple White House officials, [Kathy] Chung, Penn Biden Center employees, and President Biden’s personal attorneys to retrieve the boxes containing classified materials. The timeline also omitted multiple visits from at least five White House employees, including Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams, Annie Tomasini, and an unknown staffer.”
If true, the evidence demolishes the timeline long maintained by the Biden team. That could have an immediate impact on both the criminal and impeachment investigations.
Thus, the sitting president may not only be implicated in illegally procuring and using classified documents for an alleged influence-peddling scheme, as the Biden impeachment inquiry is investigating, but knowingly making false statements to investigators and obstruction of justice by deliberately withholding evidence.
What about treason?
A senator has No authority to take secret files home, they are never supposed to leave the SCIFF!