Representative James R. Comer, the Kentucky Republican who is in line to become the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said on Monday that he would investigate the discovery of the classified documents in Mr. Biden’s office, vowing to send letters demanding information within 48 hours.
“How ironic,” Mr. Comer said in an interview. “Now, we learn that Joe Biden had documents that are considered classified. I wonder, is the National Archives going to trigger a raid of the White House tonight? Or of the Biden Center?” He added, “So now we’re going to take that information that we requested on the Mar-a-Lago raid and we’re going to expand it to include the documents that Joe Biden has.”
By contrast, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, downplayed the matter, saying that he had confidence that Mr. Garland had taken appropriate steps to review the circumstances and that Mr. Biden’s lawyers “appear to have taken immediate and proper action” to notify the archives of the documents.
The department’s leadership decided to make the unusual choice of assigning the case outside the jurisdictions involved because Mr. Lausch was a Republican appointee and his work would likelier be seen as impartial, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Mr. Biden had kept Mr. Lausch in office at the request of the two Democratic senators from Illinois, Richard J. Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, because he was investigating Michael J. Madigan, the former speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, during the presidential transition in 2021. In March, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Madigan, a Democrat, on 22 counts of racketeering and corruption charges.
A department spokesman had no comment on the matter, and would not say whether the national security division, which has spearheaded the investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of documents at his Florida residence and resort, was also involved.
With Mr. Lausch investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified information, and David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden, both Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys who have remained at the department are now scrutinizing the Biden family.
Luke Broadwater, Katie Benner and Adam Goldman contributed reporting.
