The Secret Service is “collecting” information after the Republican Party demanded the secret service’s visitor log for Biden’s Delaware home. The Secret Service informed the Washington Examiner that it is “collecting” information in response to Republican senators’ request for a list of all the people who have visited places where President Joe Biden’s sensitive materials have been discovered.
Monday, Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson demanded visitation logs from the Secret Service. Now, the Secret Service has stated that it is examining the letter sent from the two senators and is gathering different material, in addition to “working via proper channels” to identify what may be relevant to Congressional queries.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi stated that they had received Senator Grassley’s letter and are reviewing it. Guglielme added that the agency does not maintain formal and complete visitation logs for protectee houses. Guglielmi explained that there is no system of certified visitor logs like at the White House or other government sites covered by the Presidential Records Act, he explained in an email on Wednesday morning.
However, Guglielmi stated that the Secret Service preserves some visitor data, including “certain contractors” and “employees.” According to him, the agency also collects information on the “law enforcement and criminal justice” backgrounds of persons who frequent protected sites.
The Secret Service’s statements come after Fox News reported Thursday that the agency is supposedly prepared to supply Congress with a list of visits to Biden’s house in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden’s residence and the Penn Center Biden think tank, which he used as a private office from 2017 to 2020, were the locations of confidential papers during Biden’s vice presidency from November 2022 to January 2023.
During a 13-hour search of Biden’s Wilmington residence on Friday, the Justice Department discovered six additional papers. Biden or Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, were not at the home at the time. On January 12, Attorney General Merrick Garland hired Trump-nominated special counsel Robert Hur to examine Biden’s mishandling of confidential documents.
Johnson stated on Monday that he hope the Secret Service would be forthright and cooperative as Sen. Grassley and himself investigate Joe Biden’s mismanagement of national secrets.
In response to Grassley and Johnson’s request, Guglielmi said that the Secret Service does not currently have an estimate for when it can provide Biden’s Wilmington visitation data. While the Secret Service has acknowledged that it preserves some visitor information, the White House has disputed that Biden’s Wilmington residence has visitor logs. Images from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop indicate that the president’s son drove the older Corvette parked in the residence’s garage that housed some of the confidental information.
The Washington Examiner stated that the photographs are dated 2017, which closely coincided with when Hunter Biden was discussing a business transaction with CEFC, a defunct Chinese energy giant associated with the Chinese government.
In 2017 and 2018, the conglomerate run by Ye Jianming, who has since fled to China when court documents linking him to a bribery case surfaced, paid Hunter Biden $6 million in consulting and legal costs, according to public records.
Last week, White House spokesperson Iam Sams stated that like every president in the decades of the modern era, his house was private. He then mentioned that after assuming office, President Biden reinstated the standard and tradition of maintaining White House visitor logs and regularly publicizing them after the previous administration discontinued them.
House Republicans and other watchdog organizations have requested that the DOJ review Biden’s Senate papers for secret information. The University of Delaware houses the concealed records, which contain over 2,000 boxes and more than 400 terabytes during his 36-year Senate tenure.
In April 2019, hours before Biden started his presidential campaign, the university said it would withhold the records until he “retires from public life.”