National Archives was ordered not to publicize Biden classified docs, White House plays dumb

GOP House Oversight Chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday that the National Archives was told not to disclose the discovery of classified documents in President Biden’s possession and the White House once again has no answer for it.

(Video Credit: Fox News)

Comer alluded to a cover-up involving either Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland over the silencing of the National Archives concerning the matter ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

“Can you tell us what happened? Did they shed any light on any of this?” Hannity asked Comer, addressing his meeting with the National Archives’s general counsel.

“Well, 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 replied.

The Oklahoma congressman then described how former President Trump was treated versus Biden concerning classified documents found in their possession.

“But we went ahead and we had about a three-plus hour transcribed interview with the general counsel. And what we learned was there is a double standard here with how Donald Trump was treated versus Joe Biden. And I’ll give you an example, Sean. If you go on the National Archives website, there’s pages and pages of press releases and information about the FBI raid into Mar-a-Lago and Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents. But there’s nothing on the website about Joe Biden. There wasn’t any press release or anything on the website about Joe Biden,” Comer charged.

“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. And the 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,’” he added.

At that point, Comer laid the blame directly at Biden or Garland’s feet concerning the issue.

“But there are only two people that could have given him those orders. And that’s either the Department of Justice with Merrick Garland or the White House with Joe Biden. So it shows right there that this Department of Justice and this White House is interfering with this and treating Donald Trump very differently than they’re treating Joe Biden,” he concluded.

Hannity then stepped in to further broach the subject of Biden having classified material at his Delaware home.

“Well, I want to hone in on that,” the Fox News host stated.

“So in the last 48 hours, the last two days now, we have had Jim Jordan’s Committee on Judiciary denied documents by the Department of Justice. Now, you are being shut down in your investigation of the archives, which is critical to getting to the bottom of this. Then we have this whole issue of a double standard. We have five different locations where documents were found with the Bidens,” Hannity asserted.

“Clearly, Hunter Biden, a crack addict at the time, had access to some of these documents. Nobody had to answer for that at this point. They’ve never gone into whether or not. Why hasn’t there been a prosecution in over three years as a result from the Hunter Biden laptop? And why are they ignoring the University of Delaware? There’s this trove of documents that Joe Biden has there. Why didn’t they raid the home of his beach house in Delaware? Why is it they didn’t tell us on or before the November eight midterm that, in fact, Joe Biden had top secret classified documents? Why didn’t they tell us that? In fact, the FBI went to the Penn Biden Center. They treated this entirely differently than the way they treated Donald Trump, haven’t they?” he asked Comer.

Comer agreed and then said the committee wants answers.

“They have. And another question we asked was why? Why can’t the White House tell us more about their documents? Are they allowed to talk about their documents? And the general counsel for the National Archives said he didn’t have any problem with the White House being transparent about what’s going on with their investigation,” he recounted.

So it’s not the National Archives. It’s the Department of Justice. It’s Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice. And remember, Sean, we wouldn’t even know about the fact that Joe Biden had classified documents in his possession were it not for a leak to CBS News. So someone leaked this out. We would never have heard it from this White House. They would have covered it up forever like all the other cover-ups they’re doing with every major part of our investigation into the Biden family influence peddling,” Comer concluded.

The spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, Ian Sams, later spoke with reporters concerning the claim.

(Video Credit: Fox News)

He seemed to be caught off guard by a reporter’s question about the National Archives not being allowed to issue press releases on classified documents found in Biden’s possession.

“Did anyone at the White House at any point tell the National Archives in any form that they could not release a press release about the discovery of classified documents?” the off-camera reporter asked at the briefing.

“What do you, what’s that in reference to?” Sams responded.

“There is reporting that came from the House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who says that in his conversations with the National Archives, they communicated that they were told the archives was told it could not release a press release at whatever point it was about the discovery of classified documents and did anyone at the White House told them not to do that?” the reporter clarified.

“Yeah, I don’t know anything about that. If that’s actually what he said, it’s probably better to ask the archives if that’s actually what was said and try to understand a little bit more what he meant,” Sams evasively replied, referring to Comer.

When a reporter asked him to answer “yes” or “no” concerning the question, Sams tersely commented that he had already answered the question.

The National Archives is not commenting on the issue and neither is the White House.

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