By Steve Holland and Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – No visitor logs exist for President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified documents from his vice presidential days were found, as it is a private residence, the White House Counsel’s office said on Monday.
“Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal. But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them,” the White House Counsel’s office said in a statement.
Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, declined to release logs of visitors to the White House during his four years in office, in a break with prior norms.
The Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee on Sunday demanded visitor logs for Democrat Biden’s house in Wilmington after classified documents were found in his office and garage.
Republicans have sought to compare the Biden documents case with that of Trump, who faces a federal criminal probe of how he handled classified documents after he left the White House in 2021.
Legal experts have noted the differences between the two cases. The White House says Biden’s team has turned over the documents it found. Trump had resisted doing so until an FBI search in August at his Palm Beach, Florida resort.
Biden’s legal team said it had found classified documents relating to his time as vice president under then-President Barack Obama at his Delaware home and at a Washington think-thank. His lawyers on Saturday reported finding five additional pages at his home. The material at the think tank was found in November and the disclosure was made public after a CBS News report last week.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday named a special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of the sensitive government documents. A separate special counsel is investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents, as well as his unsuccessful attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
