GOP House Oversight Chair Exposed for Classified Doc Hypocrisy – Rolling Stone

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Rep. James Comer, the incoming Chairman of the Republican Oversight and Accountability Committee, failed to clearly state why newly discovered classified documents found in President Joe Biden’s home and former personal office were worth the committee’s investigation. but not the classified documents found on former president Trump. Mar-a-Lago resort.

“Do you only care about classified documents being mishandled when the Democrats do the mishandling?” CNN host Jake Tapper pressed Comer on Sunday’s State of the Union.

CNN asked Comer, who has been trying to make a big deal of Biden’s handling of classified documents, to explain a clip of him saying in November that investigating Trump’s mishandling of classified docs was “not a priority.” for him pic.twitter.com/jaGSbnC4Ew

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 15, 2023

The conversation began when Tapper asked Comer to react to the latest news about five additional classified documents discovered at Biden’s residence on Saturday.

“Well, my concern is that the special counsel were called for, but yet, hours after that, we still have the president’s personal attorneys, who do not have security clearance, still rummaging through the president’s residence looking for things- thing,” Comer said, adding. that he believed the residence was “essentially a crime scene, so to speak.”

Comer’s answer, however, ignores the fact that the documents were discovered while White House counsel Richard Sauber, who held a security clearance, was overseeing a search of Biden’s home and while Department officials of Justice will be present, Sauber said in a statement on Saturday.

“As I was turning it over to the DOJ officials with me, five additional classified pages were discovered with the accompanying material, for a total of six pages. My fellow DOJ officers immediately took it,” the statement said.

Comer went on to say he wanted to subpoena visitor logs at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del., as well as the Biden Center for Diplomacy, the think tank where Biden’s personal office is located, “because it the same type of investigation that was done by Democrats were very angry and launched and demanded to happen to President Trump.” But, Tapper said, Comer never called for the release of Mar-a- visitor logs Lago. Editor’s pick

“So the hypocrisy here is great,” Comer said, adding, “We just want equal treatment.”

Tapper then confronted Comer with a clip of the congressman from Nov. 2022 where he said investigating Trump’s mishandling of classified documents was “not a priority” for his committee.

“So, what do you say to viewers who don’t understand why President Biden’s documents seem like a huge priority for you, but President Trump, who has obtained hundreds of more documents, has not followed through on subpoena, has not contacted the National. The archives or the Justice Department to say, hey, we found these documents, is not a priority?” Tapper asked. “Do you only care about classified documents being mishandled when the Democrats do the mishandling?”

In his answer, Comer gave his partisan motivation. “We don’t know exactly what Trump has compared to what Biden has,” he said. “At the end of the day, my biggest concern is not the declassified documents, to be honest with you. My concern is how there was a difference in how former President Trump was treated by the invasion of Mar-a- Lago, by taking security cameras, by taking pictures of documents on the floor, by going into Melania’s closet, against Joe Biden. They seem OK, those personal lawyers without security clearance, yes, they can pass.”

Again, Tapper went through a long list of how Trump refused to cooperate with the Justice Department and lied about having documents in his possession. “There’s a big difference in how President Biden and his team responded and how President Trump and his team responded,” Tapper said. “The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago because Trump—for more than a year—refused to hand over the documents to the National Archives and the Justice Department, which is trying to get them back into safe hands. Trump and his lawyers lied about it. Trump lied about not having any kind of documents.”

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Comer returned to Trump’s excuse. That he as president has the powers to declassify any document he chooses. But Tapper noted that the Obama Administration authorized the vice president to declassify the documents as well. Trending

Comer: “I think the influence peddling about the Trump administration will be part of our overall investigation… but with respect to the investigation into President Trump, there’s so much investigation into Trump, I don’t think we need to spend a lot of time” pic .twitter.com/yRMxNcuzpm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 15, 2023

“So, the average American who doesn’t care if the person you’re investigating has a D or an R next to their name can listen to this interview and think, I don’t have a problem with anything he’s investigating when it comes to Biden. , but why isn’t he investigating all the same things when it comes to Trump?” Tapper said, citing, “There are questions about influence peddling when it comes to the Trump family. There are questions about visitor logs when it comes to Mar-a-Lago. I mean, if you do the Oversight and Accountability Committee , which you renamed, for the American people, not just for the Republicans, it seems to me that all of this should be investigated.

Comer then said he intended to investigate “influence peddling with respect to the Trump administration” but then added, “But with respect to investigating President Trump, there are so many investigations into President Trump, I don’t think we have to spend a lot of time investigating President Trump, because the Democrats have done that for the last six years. So, nobody has been investigated more than Donald Trump.”

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