CNN
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The White House counsel’s office says there are no visitors logs that track guests who come and go at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
House Republicans have been demanding that the White House turn over all information related to misplaced classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president, including any visitors logs to Biden’s private residence and who might have had access to his private office in Washington, DC, where the first batch of documents were discovered in early November.
“Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” the counsel’s office said in a statement Monday morning. “But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them.”
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the US Secret Service, said the agency also does not independently maintain visitor logs for Biden’s home in Wilmington. The agency provides security for the property, and screens visitors before they arrive to Biden’s home, but does not maintain records of those visitors. Biden and his staff determine who is permitted onto the property.
Guglielmi said the Secret Service does not independently maintain visitor logs at the Wilmington home because it is a “private residence.”
The White House announced over the weekend that it had discovered five additional pages of classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington home on Thursday. The White House counsel’s office said it would be referring all future questions to the special counsel’s office.
In a letter addressed to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, asked for more documents and communications related to the searches of Biden’s homes and other locations by the president’s aides for classified documents, as well as visitors logs of the president’s Wilmington home from January 20, 2021 to present.
“It is troubling that classified documents have been improperly stored at the home of President Biden for at least six years, raising questions about who may have reviewed or had access to classified information,” Comer wrote in the letter. “As Chief of Staff, you are head of the Executive Office of the President and bear responsibility to be transparent with the American people on these important issues related to the White House’s handling of this matter.”
The announcement on Saturday was the third time in less than a week that the White House was forced to acknowledge a batch of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president had been found at a personal property – first an office space in Washington, DC, and then in the Wilmington home.
CNN previously reported that the classified material found in Biden’s private office included some top secret files with the “sensitive compartmentalized information” designation, which is used for highly sensitive information obtained from intelligence sources. Those documents included US intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, according to a source familiar with the matter.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
