by Rep. Jim Jordan, head of the Judiciary Committee, said Sunday that federal agencies were handling President Joe Biden’s and former President Donald Trump’s confidential documents cases differently.
In an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Jordan, R-Ohio, suggested there was a double standard between the discovery of classified documents held by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and the vice president’s documents found in Biden’s home in Delaware and in an office in Washington.
Jordan accused the FBI and other agencies of being “weaponized”: “The FBI raided a former president’s home 91 days before the election, took a sitting congressman’s phone, and so on.”
Todd pushed back, saying, “There was nine months between the initial action … the [National] Archives requested documents before even turning them over to the Justice Department. The subpoena was issued 60 days before they actually executed a subpoena.
“And more importantly, the only time the public has found out is because Donald Trump has told the public about it. This wasn’t some sort of new painting like a picture of the FBI doing this, this, and this within hours of each other, when really it’s been a year and a half since Donald Trump hasn’t fulfilled any of the Nationals’ requests Archives,” Todd said, “This is not some kind of proof that they somehow got armed and got into politics.”
Jordan said: “They broke into Trump’s house. They didn’t raid Biden’s home.
“Because Biden didn’t challenge a subpoena, Congressman,” Todd said, adding that Trump had 60 days to comply before the FBI executed a search warrant.
The National Archives contacted Trump officials soon after he left office in 2021 to inform them that the agency believed some documents were missing and needed to be returned. After months of back and forth, the former president sent 15 boxes of files, some containing classified documents, from Mar-a-Lago to the archives in January last year. More classified documents were found later, after the FBI learned Trump had failed to fully comply with a subpoena.
Jordan’s remarks come on the heels of a new Republican majority in the House. He also now chairs the federal government’s Select Subcommittee on Armaments, which could serve as a one-stop shop to investigate perceived wrongdoing by the federal government against conservatives, including Trump.
Biden was being examined for documents with classified marks found in his Delaware home and in a Washington office. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, a top Biden ally, said last week, “To think that any of them ended up in boxes in storage in one place or another is just unacceptable.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have seized on the revelations, with some claiming it shows the FBI wrongfully targeted Trump when he raided his Mar-a-Lago home to retrieve classified documents.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed Special Counsel Robert Hur, a former federal prosecutor who worked with many Republicans during his law enforcement career, to oversee the Biden investigation.
Jordan this month announced that the Judiciary Committee had opened an investigation into classified Obama-era documents found at Biden’s home and former Washington office. In a letter to Garland, Jordan requested all documents and communications between the Justice Department, the FBI, and the White House about the discovery, as well as information about Garland’s appointment of Hur.
House oversight committee chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has asked the White House to release visitor records from the Biden home in Delaware after other classified Obama administration documents were found at the president’s residence in Delaware.
The White House counsel’s office said last week it was reviewing Comer’s recent requests related to Biden’s handling of confidential documents and signaled it intends to cooperate to some extent.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
