In the latest sign that House Republicans may face roadblocks in their quest for information about President Joe Biden’s classified documents inquiry, the National Archives told congressional investigators on Tuesday that it won’t share documents with lawmakers without a green light from the Justice Department.
Debra Steidel Wall, acting archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, told House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer that the newly appointed special counsel investigating the document discovery would have to approve any records or interviews given to the committee.
“Our desire to provide you with as much information as we can, however, must also be balanced with the need to protect Executive branch equities, particularly as they relate to ongoing criminal law enforcement investigations by DOJ,” Wall wrote in a letter to Comer.
The National Archives head revealed that Comer’s staff met privately on Friday with two top officials at the records agency, where those officials told the Republican congressional aides that the Justice Department would need to approve any material given to the Oversight Committee.
In the letter, Wall clarified further that the DOJ had since said the additional approval of special counsel Robert Hur would be needed for the National Archives to cooperate with Republican investigators.
Comer had asked the Biden administration for information about who searched for classified records among Biden’s personal belongings and where those searches took place.
His investigation is one of two that House Republicans began last week; a second inquiry, led by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, focuses primarily on the actions of the DOJ in the months before the case came to light publicly.
GOP lawmakers have accused the DOJ and the National Archives of handling the Biden case more sympathetically than a similar case involving former President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents.
Wall sought to refute accusations of bias in her letter to Comer.
She noted that the National Archives “had no knowledge of and played absolutely no role in” the FBI’s raid of Trump’s home in August. Critics have questioned why the FBI raided Trump’s home on suspicion of him having classified records in it but did not take any similar steps on the suspicion of Biden having classified records in his home.
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The DOJ instead allowed Biden’s private lawyers to conduct searches of Biden’s residence and trusted their word that all classified documents had been recovered.
Wall also noted that the National Archives had not commented publicly on either case until news reports alerted the public to the existence of each. Only then, she said, did the agency respond to inquiries.
Since Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur to oversee the Biden case as special counsel, the White House has largely refused to answer questions about the sequence of events from November to January that led to the criminal investigation.
