White House misled Congress, American people about Joe Biden's classified documents, Comer alleges

The White House misled Congress and the American people about the discovery and handling of classified documents that were in President Joe Biden's possession at an insecure office at his old university think tank job, the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee alleged Wednesday,

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., made the allegations and demanded interviews with five White House officials just days after Biden was interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Hur in a criminal investigation of the same documents discovered last year at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Biden Center in Washington D.C.

Specifically, Comer revealed in a letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel that evidence showed the White House first learned about the documents at the university office in March 2021, even though it originally claimed the documents were found in November of the following year. It identified at least five interactions White House and Biden attorneys had regarding the documents that were kept from Congress.

"President Biden’s timeline was incomplete and misleading," Comer declared in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon. "It omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating among multiple White House officials, Ms. [Kathy] Chung, Penn Biden Center employees, and President Biden’s personal attorneys to retrieve the boxes containing classified materials. The timeline also omitted multiple visits from at least five White House employees, including Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams, Annie Tomasini, and an unknown staffer.

"There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials,” Comer added. “The Committee believes the White House can provide important insight regarding the discrepancies between the official accounts released by the White House and President Biden’s attorney, and the explanations we have received through multiple transcribed interviews regarding the classified documents."

Comer made several bombshell revelations in a letter he sent to Siskel, the most important being that White House official Annie Tomasini initiated contact with Penn Biden Center on March 18, 2021 to schedule a visit and “take inventory of what was left at the Center," well before Biden asked the National Archives to give the FBI access to boxes of evidence that former President Donald Trump had taken to his Mar-a-Lago estate, essentially escalating a criminal probe of his chief GOP rival.

"Importantly, no public statement has reflected that Ashley Williams, another White House employee, allegedly removed boxes from Penn Biden Center on October 13, 2022. To date, the White House has not disclosed what was in the boxes Ms. Williams retrieved or where they were delivered," Comer wrote. 

Voters were not told about the discover of the documents at Biden's UPenn office until months later.

You can read the full letter here: