The Department of Justice has a double standard when it comes to investigating President Joe Biden‘s handling of classified documents, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on Wednesday.
The discovery of classified documents from Barack Obama’s presidency at a think tank linked to Biden prompted immediate comparisons to former President Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents from his presidency. Biden’s documents were first discovered on Nov. 2, days before the midterm elections, but only publicly revealed this week.
“Why does his Justice Department treat people differently? Every time we find something that comes out before the election dealing with Biden’s family, it’s pushed under the rug,” McCarthy told reporters, bringing up how Twitter suppressed the story of Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop before the 2020 election. He also added that the DOJ’s approach to the Biden documents proves the need for the new House subcommittee on the “weaponization” of government agencies.
McCarthy talked about the revelations with Fox News’s Sean Hannity Tuesday night.
“They’ve gotten away with so much for so long. This was discovered before the last election — just like the laptop,” he said, adding, “They think they can lie to the American public. They think they can control the media, control companies to shut down if one media company writes about it. They think they’re above the law.”
Republicans were quick to ask why it took so long for the news to break and relitigated the way the Justice Department has handled Trump’s own handling of classified records.
An August raid on Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago residence revealed 300 potentially classified documents the former president should have returned to the National Archives.
“Why weren’t they raided? Why didn’t they have the FBI coming in?” McCarthy asked on Tuesday.
Biden’s defenders have pointed out that the president’s legal counsel immediately and voluntarily alerted authorities to the documents, while Trump did not voluntarily cooperate.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) sent letters to the National Archives and White House Counsel’s Office requesting information about the documents.
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“For months, NARA failed to disclose to Committee Republicans or the American public that President Biden — after serving as Vice President — stored highly classified documents in a closet at his personal office. NARA learned about these documents days before the 2022 midterm elections and did not alert the public that President Biden was potentially violating the law,” Comer said in his letter to the National Archives.
