Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the newly appointed House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman, on Sunday sidestepped multiple questions about why the panel won’t investigate former President Trump over his handling of classified documents, despite plans to probe President Biden for similar offenses.
“With respect to investigating President Trump, there have been so many investigations of President Trump. I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years,” Comer said on CNN’s “State of the Union” with anchor Jake Tapper.
“So no one’s been investigated more than Donald Trump. Who hasn’t been investigated? Joe Biden, and that’s why we’re finally launching an investigation of Joe Biden, the House Oversight Committee … and I hope to have it wrapped up as soon as possible,” Comer said.
Republicans have declined to look into Trump’s case, in which the FBI found hundreds of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after executing a search warrant on the property. The National Archives had been seeking the documents for more than a year before the search was conducted and alerted the Department of Justice once it discovered the volume of materials that were missing from its records.
In Biden’s case, his personal attorneys discovered documents dating back to his time as vice president when clearing out an office Biden used in Washington, D.C. Days later, a report surfaced that documents were also found at his Wilmington, Del., residence. Both accounts were only made public after news reports on the matter were published.
On Saturday, Biden’s special counsel revealed another set of documents found in Wilmington after the administration said earlier in the week that such searches had been completed. The White House has been facing increasing scrutiny over the matter as the first set of documents were discovered Nov. 2, just six days ahead of crucial midterm elections.
House Republicans have repeatedly defended Trump and been overly critical of the FBI search, but have not called for any congressional oversight on the case. Comer on Sunday, however, vowed to investigate the circumstances of the document discoveries when it came to Biden, sidestepping questions on whether that was considered hypocritical.