House of Representative committee to seek information about classified documents at the Penn Biden Center

A House of Representative committee announced that it will seek information from the Office of Special Counsel Robert Hur related to President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center.

In a press release on Monday, the Republican-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee wrote that Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), voiced concerns that Biden may have retained “sensitive documents” related to specific countries involving his family's foreign business schemes, which potentially brought in millions of dollars of income for the Biden family.

“If any of the classified documents mishandled by President Biden involved countries or individuals that had financial dealings with Biden family members or their related companies, the Committee needs access to that information to evaluate whether our national security has been compromised,” Chairman Comer wrote.

A spokesperson from the University did respond to a request for comment by publication. According to the Associated Press, Biden has said he was not aware of being in possession of the documents.

The letter wrote that “the Committee has developed significant evidence regarding President Biden’s retention of classified materials at Penn Biden Center,” adding that witness testimony, emails, and text messages substantiate the coordination of White House employees moving boxes at the Center.

The Committee asked Hur for a list of countries named in documents recovered from the Center, a list of individuals named in any documents recovered from the Center, and the documents themselves recovered from the Center.

The Committee previously claimed that the White House and Biden’s attorney made misleading statements about the discovery of classified materials at the Penn Biden Center, and at least five White House employees where tasked with “coordinating, organizing, and removing boxes” from the Penn Biden Center from March 2021 to October 2022, according to an Oct. 11 press release.

The letter to Special Counsel Robert Hur comes nearly a year after the same House committee sent a letter to Penn President Liz Magill inquiring about documents and lists pertaining to donations from China to the University and the Penn Biden Center since 2017, as well as people who worked at the Center and information about people who visited President Joe Biden at the Center.

The letter to Magill also claimed that Penn received “millions of dollars from anonymous Chinese sources” and that these donations tripled following the announcement of the formation of the Penn Biden Center in 2017.

In January, the Department of Justice began reviewing classified documents that were found at Penn’s Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a University think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Under the title “Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor,” Biden held joint appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Arts and Sciences, with a secondary affiliation in the Wharton School, starting in February of 2017. Biden left Penn in 2019 to pursue the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Apart from serving as an office for Biden, the Penn Biden Center — which is part of Penn Global — has employed interns participating in the Penn in Washington program and hosted political science courses offered by Penn.