Hunter Biden’s access to classified documents in Delaware questioned

Republicans are speculating that the secret documents President Joe Biden keeps at his Delaware home may have been reviewed by the President’s son, Hunter Biden.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that classified documents from the Obama administration were found at the president’s private residence in Wilmington.

This revelation came just days after it was announced that a first batch of classified documents from Biden’s vice presidential tenure had been found in an office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC

Biden defended the discovery at his private home, insisting he “treats classified materials seriously” and noting that the documents are in a “locked” garage. Attorney General Merrick Garland later in the day appointed a special counsel to investigate the finds of the Biden documents.

Republicans have argued that there is a double standard when it comes to misuse of government records. Some have called for the FBI to search Biden’s home to look for more classified documents, as happened at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last summer.

After the new discovery in Delaware, a number of prominent conservatives made conspiracy-laden suggestions that Hunter Biden may have seen the documents, although there is no evidence he did so.

“Given his extensive ties to China, Russia and Ukraine, does Hunter Biden have access to Joe Biden’s garage and thus to the classified documents?” Donald Trump jr. tweeted.

“Gosh, I hope Biden didn’t let Hunter drive the Corvette.” tweeted conservative commentator Liz Wheeler. “Hunter may have found the classified documents. Have we checked Hunter’s naked crack smoking Russian hooker videos for Biden’s secret documents yet?”

“Has Hunter Biden peeked at the secret documents on Ukraine that his father happened to have lying around in his Corvette?” conservative author and activist Brigitte Gabriel tweeted. “The American people deserve to know.”

Some also called for the White House to release “logs of visitors” to Biden’s home, with GOP Representative Lance Gooden of Texas writing the president a letter demanding the logs be released.

“Today we learned that Biden is keeping classified documents in the garage of his Delaware home,” Gooden said tweeted when sharing the letter. “However, the Biden WH is still shielding visitor logs from this home. The American people deserve to know who had access to that garage.”

“Apparently we now know why they were so secretive about the visitor logs at Joe Biden’s house,” Donald Trump Jr. said. tweeted in response to Gooden. “Don’t Americans deserve to know? If it was Trump, they would be clamoring for it!”

“How many times has Hunter Biden visited Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington with the classified documents and the Corvette?” tweeted conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “Release Visitor Logs!”

Because it’s a private residence, it’s not clear that visitor logs are kept at Biden’s Delaware home. Regardless of any records, the possibility that Hunter Biden visited his father’s home at any point in the approximately six years since he was vice president seems far from unlikely.

However, there is little reason to believe that Hunter Biden would have checked the documents when visiting his father.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump claimed without evidence that Chinese agents “saw” the classified documents kept at the Penn Biden Center.

The status of visitor logs taken at the homes of Trump, who may be charged over his own classified documents scandal, is unclear.

In 2017, a surveillance group sued the then-president for releasing visitor logs from Mar-a-Lago, which is also a private club alongside Trump’s private residence. The intelligence service later said that the names of the visitors could not be released because no such log existed.

As part of the same lawsuit, the Department of Homeland Security said there were no visitor logs for Trump Tower in New York City, which still served as Trump’s primary residence at the time.

Trump also refused to publicly release White House visitor logs during his presidency, leading some to criticize his administration for a lack of transparency. The Biden White House publicly releases White House Visitor Logs online every month.

During a Thursday news conference, a Fox News reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre when the Biden administration would “release a transcript of visitors to the Wilmington House.”

Jean-Pierre did not directly answer the question or indicate whether a protocol existed, instead pointing out how the current White House policy regarding its own visitor protocol differed from that of the Trump administration.

“We did something that abolished the last White House,” she said. “This introduces the White House Minutes. Did you ask the last administration why they got rid of the White House Minutes?”

news week has reached out to the White House for comment.