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Over the past several months, it’s come to light that both Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have improperly kept classified White House documents in their possession — but House Oversight Committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) has indicated that he’s only planning to investigate Biden, despite a majority of the American public believing that Trump’s actions were illegal.
On Sunday, Comer was interviewed by CNN host Pamela Brown, who asked why Comer plans to investigate Biden but not Trump.
“What’s different with Joe Biden is we’re investigating the Biden family for influence peddling,” Comer said, insinuating that Biden’s possession of documents could have been used to promote the business dealings of the Biden family over the years.
Brown then asked why he wasn’t giving Trump the same treatment, given that the former president’s business dealings are far more extensive than Biden’s and that there were much more documents in his possession. Comer said that he didn’t see any evidence that Trump had engaged in influence peddling — but later admitted that there was no evidence that Biden had engaged in influence peddling, either.
“We don’t know. We want to look,” Comer said, after being pressed by Brown.
On Monday morning, during an event held by The National Press Club, Comer claimed that he was justified in not pursuing the former president because a Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel was investigating Trump, adding that he was “confident” that the counsel was “looking into everything.”
But Biden’s possession of classified documents is also being investigated by a special counsel — and after being pressed to explain how the cases were different, Comer once again pushed his unproven claims of influence peddling.
“We learned that they have classified documents in multiple locations. … Is that part of the influence peddling? We don’t know,” he said.
Comer has been pushing the idea of Biden engaging in influence peddling since at least November, claiming that the Oversight Committee has evidence that he or his family members “sold access for profit around the world to the detriment of American interests.” But that evidence has not yet been shared publicly, and Comer’s recent comments seem to indicate that the evidence is less concrete than he claims.
Comer has also said that Biden’s case warrants further scrutiny because the documents were found in two separate locations. The same is true of Trump, however — beyond his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, two classified documents were found in a storage facility outside of Trump’s personal residence.
According to recent polling by CNN and the polling organization SSRS, a majority of voters (52 percent) believe that Trump’s actions were illegal, while just 37 percent believe that Biden’s actions were illegal.
So far, just a handful of documents have been found in Biden’s possession — around a dozen have been located at a think tank where Biden once had an office, and around half a dozen have been found at his home in Delaware.
Meanwhile, more than 300 classified documents, among thousands of other government documents that were improperly removed from the White House, have been discovered at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Trump refused to cooperate with federal officials who requested that he return the documents, and had his legal team sign a subpoena order promising that he didn’t have more documents in his possession when there were still over 100 pieces of classified material hidden at his estate.
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