White House, Secret Service say no visitor logs for Biden’s Delaware home
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US President Joe Biden at the White House on Jan 16. A visitors log is not a must at Mr Biden's as it is a private residence.
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON – No visitor logs exist for US President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified documents from his vice-presidential days were found,
“Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” the White House counsel’s office said in a statement.
The Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting current and past presidents and their families, does not “independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence”, the agency’s spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
Representative James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, on Sunday demanded visitor logs for Mr Biden’s house in Wilmington after classified documents were found in his office and garage there.
Republicans have sought to compare the Biden documents case with that of former president Donald Trump,
Democrats have unsuccessfully sought visitor logs for Mr Trump’s Florida home for years.
Legal experts have noted the differences between the two cases. The White House says Mr Biden’s team has turned over the documents it found. Mr Trump resisted doing so until an FBI search in August at his Palm Beach, Florida, home.
Mr Biden’s legal team said it found classified documents relating to his time as vice-president under then President Barack Obama at his Delaware home and at a Washington think thank.
His lawyers on Saturday reported finding five additional pages at his home.
US Attorney-General Merrick Garland on Thursday named a special counsel to investigate Mr Biden’s handling of the sensitive government documents.
A separate special counsel is investigating Mr Trump’s handling of classified documents, as well as his unsuccessful attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Monday that Republicans want to know whether Mr Biden has turned over “all the documents”.
“Are there more out there? I think there’s a lot of questions that continue to arise, and we want to get all the information possible,” he said.
Mr Biden restored the tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the Trump administration ended doing that, the White House counsel noted in Monday’s statement. REUTERS
