James Comer, House Oversight Committee Chairman, said that former executive assistant to President Joe Biden, Kathy Chung’s testimony in Congress had damaged the White House’s story about Biden’s handling of secret documents (R-Ky.)
According to a statement issued by Comer on April 4, Chung offered startling material undercutting the Biden White House’s narrative during her transcribed interview with the panel.
The Penn Biden Center, an office near the White House, and an office in Chinatown are the three sites where sensitive documents, vice presidential records, and other artifacts were housed after Joe Biden ended his term as vice president, as revealed by Comer yesterday.
Currently, the Deputy Director of Protocol at the Pentagon, Chung, reportedly helped pack Biden’s belongings when he left office as vice president. The documents that Chung helped pack were sent to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
Richard Sauber, the president’s special counsel, said on November 2, 2022, that Biden’s legal team discovered a handful of sensitive documents in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center. The following day, the records were handed over to the National Archives and Records Administration.
Biden verified the discovery of the documents in a closet on January 10, one day after Sauber’s disclosure. Biden said he was also shocked to learn that confidential documents had been discovered in his old place of work.
Yet according to Comer, Chung’s testimony disproves the notion that the closet was locked.
According to Comer, the categorized boxes were driven in private vehicles to an office at some point. The boxes weren’t put in a secure location, so anyone working at or visiting the Penn Biden Center might have accessed the contents at any time.
In January 2017, Biden’s tenure as vice president ended. In January 2018, he was named an honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania and assigned the responsibility of directing the newly established Penn Biden Center. Biden reportedly had an office on the University of Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia campus.
Once Biden declared his presidential candidacy in April 2019, he was placed on unpaid leave.
Possible ties between the center and the Chinese Communist Party have been a source of worry. An official spokesman for the university vehemently denied that the center received funding from China.
Comer disputed the White House’s version of events concerning Biden’s classified documents.
Comer said yesterday it was learned that in May of 2022, former White House Counsel Dana Remus assigned Kathy Chung to acquire these boxes from the Penn Biden Center.
But as President Biden’s lawyer would have you believe, this saga did not begin in November 2022.
The Oversight Committee will follow up with potential witnesses in the coming days.
Chung’s testimony contradicted House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md), who said she didn’t know about the sensitive materials at the Penn Biden Center until November last year.
Ms. Chung, according to a statement released by Raskin on April 4, has complied with Committee Republicans at every turn, submitting materials to investigators, sitting for an interview freely, and working in earnest with Congress.
According to Raskin, Chung insisted that she didn’t know about any sensitive files at the Penn Biden Center until November 2022, when President Biden’s legal counsel uncovered them.
Raskin claimed that, before yesterday’s voluntarily transcribed interview, Republicans on the Committee had intentionally misrepresented Ms. Chung’s role with then-Vice President Biden and circulated a baseless, racial conspiracy theory about her to create a mirage of false evidence for empty attacks on President Biden.
Former federal prosecutor Robert Hur was designated special counsel to supervise the investigation of Biden’s documents by Attorney General Merrick Garland on January 12.
On January 14, the White House said that further classified documents had been discovered at Biden’s house in Delaware.
Members of the Democratic party have also criticized Biden’s handling of the confidential documents.