EXCLUSIVE — The Secret Service is “gathering” information on the heels of Republican senators demanding the agency turn over a list of “all individuals” who have visited locations where President Joe Biden’s classified documents have been found, the agency told the Washington Examiner.
Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson wrote to the Secret Service on Monday in a letter first obtained by the Washington Examiner and requested the visitor logs. Now, the Secret Service said it is evaluating that letter and is “currently in the process of gathering” various information, as well as “working through appropriate channels” to locate what “may be responsive to Congressional inquiries.”
GRASSLEY AND JOHNSON DEMAND VISITOR LOGS FOR ALL BIDEN CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT LOCATIONS
“We are in receipt of Senator Grassley’s letter and it is currently is being reviewed,” said Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, adding that the agency doesn’t maintain “formal and comprehensive visitor logs for protectee residences.”
“What I mean by that is there is not a system of validated visitor logs like you find at the White House or other government facilities that fall under the Presidential Records Act,” he continued in an email to the Washington Examiner on Wednesday morning.
Guglielmi, however, did say that the Secret Service maintains certain records pertaining to visitors, such as “certain contractors” or “workers.” The agency also compiles information related to the “law enforcement and criminal justice” histories of those visiting protected sites, he said.
The comments from the Secret Service come after Fox News reported on Thursday that the agency is allegedly willing to provide Congress with a list of visitors to Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home. The home and the Penn Center Biden think tank, which Biden used as a private office between 2017 and 2020, have been where classified documents from Biden’s vice presidency have been located between November 2022 and January.
Six more documents were found by the Justice Department on Friday at Biden’s Wilmington home during a 13-hour search, which Biden and first lady Jill Biden were not present for. On Jan. 12, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Robert Hur, a Trump DOJ appointee, to investigate Biden’s mishandling of the classified records.
“I hope the Secret Service will be transparent and cooperative as Sen. Grassley and I investigate Joe Biden’s mishandling of our nation’s top secrets,” said Johnson on Monday.
Responding to Grassley and Johnson’s letter, Guglielmi also told the Washington Examiner that the Secret Service does “not have an estimate as of yet” for when it can release visitor records related to Biden’s Wilmington home.
While the Secret Service has indicated it maintains certain records on visitors, the White House has denied that visitor logs exist for Biden’s Wilmington home. Images from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show that the president’s son has been behind the wheel of the elder Biden’s Corvette, which was parked in the garage of the home that stored classified documents.
The images are from 2017, the Washington Examiner confirmed, which roughly coincides with when Hunter Biden was in the process of negotiating a business deal with CEFC, a now-defunct Chinese energy conglomerate affiliated with the Chinese government.
The conglomerate, which was led by Ye Jianming, who has since vanished into China following court documents surfacing that linked him to a bribery case, paid Hunter Biden $6 million in consulting and legal fees in 2017 and 2018, records show.
“Like every president in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” said White House spokesman Ian Sams last week. “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.”
House Republicans and several watchdog groups have called on the DOJ to search Biden’s Senate records for classified documents. The hidden records, which include almost 2,000 boxes and more than 400 gigabytes from his 36-year Senate tenure, are housed at the University of Delaware.
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The university announced hours before Biden announced his presidential bid, in April 2019, that it would not release the documents until he “retires from public life.”
The White House did not reply to a request for comment.
