Jan. 16 (UPI) -- The White House and U.S. Secret Service responded to a request from a top House Republican lawmaker on Monday by asserting no visitors logs are kept at President Joe Biden's personal residence.
White House counsel's office spokesman Ian Sams and Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement issued to NBC News and CNN that no such logs are kept at Biden's home in Wilmington, Del.
Their statement came a day after Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House oversight and accountability committee, sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain requesting the visitor log for the home from Jan. 20, 2021, to present.
He and other House Republicans issued the call after it was revealed this weekend that a new batch of classified documents had been found at Biden's residence.
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"Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal," Sams said. "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."
Guglielmi said the Secret Service also does not independently maintain visitor logs for Biden's home, only that it performs background checks on those coming to the president's personal residences and keeps that information only for a limited time.
The Secret Service revealed in a 2017 court declaration that it also did not maintain visitor logs of former President Donald Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago during his time in office.
Some 20 documents bearing classified markings from Biden's time as vice president have been found amid an ongoing investigation into the president's handling of such reports.
"The Committee demands transparency into whether any individuals with foreign connections to the Biden family gained access to President Biden's residence and the classified documents that he has mishandled for years," Comer wrote in the letter to Klain.
"President Biden's mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security. Without a list of individuals who have visited the residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents."
Comer referred to Biden's residence as a "crime scene" interview Sunday with CNN's State of the Union, claiming that House Republicans want the visitor log "because this is the same type of investigation that the Democrats were so outraged and launched and demanded happen to President Trump."
Richard Sauber, special counsel to president, said in a statement that Biden's attorneys have been following a process and have been coordinating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice concerning the review of documents.
