Katie Porter says Democrats ‘want to get answers’ about Biden docs
Ryan King
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Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) said House Democrats aren’t backing down from asking questions about President Joe Biden’s classified document saga.
While sidestepping questions about whether she will back Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s (R-KY) records requests pertaining to the document scandal, Porter underscored that Democrats “want answers” from the Biden administration.
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“I definitely think that we want to get answers from the White House,” Porter told reporters at a town hall event Tuesday, per Fox News. “I don’t know if that document request — I have not reviewed the line by line of the request that Chairman Comer made — but I definitely think we want answers.”
Porter, who recently announced her 2024 California Senate bid, has gained notoriety during her tenure on the Oversight Committee for grilling corporate executives and others, often with a whiteboard, in confrontations that frequently go viral online. Comer recently opened an investigation into the Biden classified document situation along with his counterpart House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH).
Comer sent a letter to White House chief of staff Ron Klain over the weekend requesting communications and documents pertaining to the discovery of the classified documents from Biden’s vice presidential days. Republicans also demanded visitor logs, but the White House has revealed that visitor logs for Biden’s Wilmington residence don’t exist.
Last week, the Biden administration was rocked by revelations that multiple batches of classified documents from his vice presidential days were discovered at a think tank, Biden’s Wilmington garage, and elsewhere in his Wilmington residence.
“Classified documents belong in classified settings, and I think you heard me say oversight is not a partisan thing. Good oversight means you’re willing to hold any rule breaker to account,” Porter said.
Prior to the Biden revelations, Democrats had excoriated former President Donald Trump after the Justice Department confiscated more than 300 documents with classified markings from his Mar-a-Lago resort last year. Porter emphasized that Trump had engaged in a “much broader abuse of classified information” than Biden.
“I don’t have all the facts about President Biden’s classified information,” Porter added. “We don’t have all the facts, sadly, because of obstruction, yet about President Trump’s much broader abuse of classified information. But we should be asking for answers in a respectful way, and we should be expecting to get honest ones.”
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Biden has maintained that he is “cooperating fully” with the proper government authorities. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed U.S. Attorney Robert Hur last week to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation of the matter.
His team conducted a search after the initial discovery of classified material, but the Justice Department reportedly declined to supervise that search.