Republican Rep. James Comer on Tuesday revealed that the National Archives "wasn't allowed" to talk about the classified materials found in President Joe Biden's possession, despite their extensive public coverage of former President Donald Trump's own classified document controversy.
In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, the Kentucky congressman and new chairman of the House Oversight Committee said that National Archives general counsel Gary Stern told him had been blocked from making public statements on Biden's scandal, noting that only the Justice Department or the White House could have made that order.Right before the National Archives came in, they handed us a letter from the Department of Justice informing them and us that the general counsel for the National Archives wasn't allowed to say anything about the Biden documents," Comer said of an interview he was conducting with Stern. "But we went ahead and we had about a three-plus hour transcribed interview with the general counsel, and what we learned was that there is a double standard here with how Donald Trump was treated versus Joe Biden."On the National Archives website, there is an entire section dedicated to the classified material found in Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago in December 2021, less than a year since leaving the presidential office. Comer juxtaposed their coverage to their zero press releases on Biden's classified documents from when he was Vice President from 2009-2017 and from his time in the Senate nearly 15 years ago.
"So we asked the general counsel — why were there no press releases sent on Joe Biden once it was determined that he had classified documents in his possession?" Comer asked Hannity. "And the general counsel said that he did do press releases, but he was ordered and told they couldn't be published. So we did ask who gave him the orders, and he said, 'I can’t tell you that.'"
"But there are only two people who could have given him those orders," the Kentucky Republican said. "...and that is either the Department of Justice with Merrick Garland or the White House with Joe Biden."
