OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A government watchdog organization has raised the stakes in President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal, filing a federal complaint regarding the involvement of the White House Counsel’s office as the situation worsens for the administration.
According to Fox News Digital, the group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) filed a complaint on Tuesday with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, with the organization’s director, Mike Chamberlain, saying in a statement: “The American public will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice – with well-connected insiders subject to a lower standard of scrutiny than the normal citizen.”
“President Biden promised the most ethical and transparent administration in history,” Chamberlain said. “If the White House compounded a scandal involving possible mishandling of classified documents by improperly using taxpayer resources for his personal benefit and putting White House attorneys in positions that created conflicts of interest, we could be witnessing a serious betrayal of the public’s already-plummeting trust.”
“It also creates the specter of possible obstruction of a congressional investigation, depending on the legal basis for the intervention and any future privileges claimed by the White House on this escalating scandal,” he added.
The complaint, first seen by Fox News Digital, alleges that “taxpayer resources may have been inappropriately used by senior White House lawyers, including Special Counsel to President Richard Sauber, to personally benefit Joe Biden.”
“We further believe that the apparent representation of Mr. Biden by the White House Counsel’s Office in this matter creates an untenable conflict of interest for that office,” the complaint continued.
“The result, intended or not, could be to reduce transparency into the mishandling of state secrets and foreclose disclosure of communications between White House Counsel staff while acting on behalf of Joe Biden in his capacity as a citizen facing the prospect of criminal prosecution,” it says.
House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also commented on the complaint, asking why the president’s counsel was with Justice Department officials when they were gathering up the classified documents, which have been found at the Penn Biden Center — where the president once had a private office after leaving his vice presidency — and his the garage of one of his homes in Delaware.
“Why was White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber accompanying DOJ officials while they collected classified documents at the Biden residence?” Jordan said, according to Fox News. “Mr. Sauber’s role raises serious concerns about the integrity of the Justice Department’s investigation.”
Meanwhile, even some Democrats are now demanding answers from the president as the usually friendly mainstream media continues to report on various aspects of the scandal.
In speaking with reporters following a town hall event Tuesday evening, Rep. Katie Porter of California said members of her party want to know more about why Biden had the documents because, as vice president, he did not have any legal authority to declassify them.
“So I definitely think that we want to get answers from the White House,” Porter said, adding that she isn’t sure if she will sign on to a Republican request from House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) for any records related to the documents.
“I don’t know if that document request – I have not reviewed the line by line of the request that Chairman [James] Comer made – but I definitely think we want answers. Classified documents belong in classified settings, and I think you heard me say oversight is not a partisan thing. Good oversight means you’re willing to hold any rule breaker to account,” she said.
“I don’t have all the facts about President Biden’s classified information,” Porter continued. “We don’t have all the facts, sadly, because of obstruction yet about President Trump’s much broader abuse of classified information. But we should be asking for answers in a respectful way, and we should be expecting to get honest ones.”
Trump has said he declassified all of the documents he had in his possession, which were locked up in a secure area at his Mar-a-Lago estate before being raided by the FBI in August.
No FBI agents have raided any of Biden’s homes.
