Ilhan Omar Claims Republicans ‘Aren’t Really Interested in Upholding the Law’ amid Biden Documents Investigation

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) on Saturday claimed that Republicans are investigating President Biden’s alleged misuse of classified documents from his time as vice president as part of a “political game” and not because they care about following protocols. of security.

“What I find interesting is that the Republicans who have defended [former president] Trump after literally stealing classified documents, refusing to hand them over, lying about having them, making up some stories about how he declassified them, having his house raided to find those documents, now they are only interested in investigate Biden, who has cooperated, whose staff and former staff have turned over these documents themselves,” the progressive member of the Task Force told MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend.

“You have to understand, Republicans are not really interested in following the law, following safety protocols. What they are interested in is playing a political game now just wanting to investigate Biden,” Omar added.

A trove of classified records from Biden’s time as vice president was first obtained by Biden’s lawyers on Nov. 2 at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank that served as Biden’s private office from 2017 to 2019, after his time as vice president came to an end. .

The Office of White House Counsel then searched Biden’s Delaware homes this week and discovered “a small number of additional classified Obama-Biden administration records,” the vast majority of which were found in a storage in Biden’s Wilmington garage, White House lawyers said earlier this week.

Special Counsel Richard Sauber said later Saturday that he discovered five additional pages of classified insignia in the president’s Wilmington, Del., home on Thursday. Sauber said that after Biden’s personal lawyers discovered a classified document at Biden’s home on Wednesday, they ended their search because they did not have the proper security clearances to view the materials.

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“Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday evening to facilitate the release of the document that the President’s personal attorney found Wednesday at the Department of Justice,” Sauber said. “While I was handing it over to the DoD officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification marks were discovered in the material with it, six pages in total. The DOJ officials with me immediately took them into possession.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of a special counsel Thursday to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents.

“I’m glad there’s a special prosecutor that’s been appointed to investigate this … because any time there’s a lapse in security protocols, that should be taken seriously, should be investigated,” Omar said Saturday.

Meanwhile, the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August as part of an investigation into the former president for allegedly removing or destroying records, obstructing an investigation and violating the Espionage Act, according to orders from research. for Trump’s house.

Republicans have questioned why the Biden investigation has seemingly diverged from the Trump investigation.

“We would never have known about the possession of classified documents if it weren’t for investigative reporting by CBS that somehow got a leak to establish that this happened before the election,” the head of the House Oversight Committee said. Rep. James Comer (R., Ky. ) told CNN. “So the administration has not been transparent about what is happening with President Biden’s possession of classified documents. And we just want equal treatment here in terms of how former President (Donald) Trump and current President Biden are being treated with the document issue.”

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