Rep. James Comer (R-KY) was pressed on Sunday by CNN’s Jake Tapper to explain why he is ignoring Donald Trump’s mishandling of classified documents but has launched an investigation into President Joe Biden.
Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee announced an investigation into Biden last week after classified documents were found in his former private office and at his home in Delaware from the time he served as vice-president.
On Sunday, Tapper played an interview Comer did with CNN last November in which the congressman said investigating Trump for classified documents he knowingly took from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida “will not be a priority” for him.
Tapper pointed out that there are major differences between the Biden and Trump cases. Biden is cooperating with investigators and the National Archives while Trump ignored the Archives’ requests for the documents for more than one year, and his attorneys lied about returning all the documents. This lead to the FBI executing a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago last August.
“Do you only care about classified documents being mishandled when Democrats do the mishandling?” Tapper asked Comer.
“Absolutely not,” Comer responded. “Look, we still don’t know what type of documents President Trump had. That’s one of the questions we’ve asked National Archives.”
Comer also has no idea what type of documents President Biden had.
“At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents, to be honest with you,” Comer added. “My concern is how there’s such a discrepancy in how former President Trump was treated, by raiding Mar-a-Lago, by getting the security cameras, by taking pictures of documents on the floor, by going through Melania’s closet versus Joe Biden, who’re like, OK, your personal lawyers who don’t have security clearance, yep, they can go through, they can just keep looking and keep looking and determine whatever is there. That’s not equal treatment, and we’re very concerned and there’s a lack of trust here at the Department of Justice by House Republicans. That’s the outrage.”
“I guess the average American, who doesn’t really care whether the person you’re investigating has a D or R next to their name, might think, ‘I don’t have any problem with anything he’s investigating when it comes to Biden, but how come he’s not investigating all the same stuff when it comes to Trump?’” Tapper said. “It would seem to me that all of it should be investigated.”
