Oversight Republicans move forward with Biden document investigations as Archives buck demands

Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is preparing to move forward with his panel's investigation into the Biden family finances and the president's handling of classified documents.

"We're trying to trace the money. We'll be looking at bank statements. We'll be looking at bank violations. That's the next phase of our investigation because we're trying to figure out who these anonymous sources are that are sending so much money to the Biden family schemes — the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Hunter Biden's artwork," Comer told the Washington Examiner.

Comer's comments come as the National Archives has missed the deadline the Oversight chair issued to them to provide the committee with information on the recent discovery of classified documents at various locations once occupied by President Joe Biden.

"The National Archives has not produced the requested documents to the Committee at this time," an Oversight Committee spokesperson told Axios of the Tuesday deadline. "Chairman Comer's request still stands and anticipates moving forward with a transcribed interview with NARA's general counsel soon."

The agency's failure to comply with Comer's demands is not unexpected, as he previously announced that the Archives were not "being transparent" in the matter.

Biden appeared to have ink on his face earlier this month following reports that his lawyer had discovered classified materials allegedly containing intelligence on Ukraine, Iran and the UK while clearing out his former office in the Penn Biden Center in Washington. Subsequent searches of Biden-occupied buildings turned up more classified materials in the president's Delaware home.

The matter of classified document storage has become a more politically sensitive issue in the aftermath of the FBI's Aug. 8, 2022, raid on former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate seeking classified materials the president may have removed form the White House. Prior to the raid, Trump complied with a grand jury subpoena and surrendered classified materials to the government. The National Archives had previously alerted federal law enforcement to the missing documents, prompting the investigation.

Biden's rigorous condemnation of Trump's storage of materials at his home has somewhat undercut his own defense as the issue becomes an increasingly troublesome public controversy for the White House. The issue has since expanded to include former Vice President Mike Pence, who announced this week that he had discovered classified materials at his Indiana home.