House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar defended the handling of classified documents taken by then-Vice President Joe Biden and stored at the Penn Biden Center for over half a decade and called GOP outrage ‘Republican hypocrisy.’
‘This is Republican hypocrisy in its finest,’ Aguilar, D-Calif., said in a press conference Tuesday with party leadership collages.
‘We’re going to support the fact that the president is following this established protocol, that he did the right thing…’ Aguilar said. He accused his colleagues across the aisle of not wanting to conduct ‘meaningful’ oversight, and that they are ‘just interested in opposing this president.’
Earlier on Tuesday, House Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., noted to reporters in a press conference that President Biden was ‘very critical’ of former President Trump for having stored classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and noted that as vice president, Biden would not have the ability to declassify documents – a power only vested in the president.
On Monday evening, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told reporters that the handling of these documents is a stark contrast to the FBI’s raid of Trump’s private home at Mar-a-Lago last year in search of classified documents taken after Trump lost his re-election bid in 2020.
‘Is the White House going to be raided tonight?’ Comer asked. ‘Are they going to raid the Biden center? I don’t know.’
‘This is further concern that there’s a two-tier justice system within the DOJ with how they treat Republicans vs. Democrats … certainly how they treat the former president vs. the current president,’ Comer added.
Comer said the Oversight Committee plans to send a letter to the National Archives, and depending on where the investigation leads, would be open to holding a hearing on the matter.
‘President Biden has stated that taking classified documents from the White House is ‘irresponsible,” Comer said in a statement. ‘Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and National Archives have made compliance with the Presidential Records Act a top priority.’
‘We expect the same treatment for President Biden, who has apparently inappropriately maintained classified documents in an insecure setting for several years,’ Comer added.