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The U.S. Secret Service is prepared to turn over records of the individuals who visited President Joe Biden's Delaware home in Wilmington if asked by Congress, according to recent unconfirmed reporting by Fox News.
The claim, which directly contradicts previous statements made by the White House saying that visitor logs of Biden's Delaware home did not exist, was made by a source familiar with the situation, writes Fox News.
The news company claims that, though there might not be an official visitor log for Biden's Delaware home, the Secret Service collects information about regular visitors.
U.S. Secret Service chief of communications Anthony Guglielmi said the agency "does not maintain visitor logs at the private residences of protectees," but added that "the Secret Service does generate law enforcement and criminal justice information records for various individuals who may come into contact with Secret Service protected sites."
If the Secret Service actually held any kind of record of visitors to Biden's Delaware home, it would be a drastically different behavior than the one they maintained during Donald Trump's presidency, when the agency stated that they did not keep any form of visitor logs.
Back in 2017, the Secret Service responded to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit confirming that there were no visitor logs or other system of tracking those who visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, as reported by POLITICO.
Last August, the former president's luxurious residence was raided by the FBI in search of classified documents Trump had not handed to the National Archives.
Newsweek reached out to the White House and the U.S. Secret Service for comment.
An unspecified number of classified documents from Biden's time as vice president have been found in the president's former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. and his home in Wilmington, Delaware, between November and January this year.
The discovery of classified documents in Biden's possession was immediately turned into a political weapon for Republicans to use against the president, who had previously commented on Trump's mishandling of sensitive and classified material from his time as president as "irresponsible."
Despite there being a parallel between the two incidents, the situations are very different: Biden's lawyers, who discovered the documents in his former office and his home, immediately contacted authorities to hand over the material, unlike Trump's legal team.
But the fragmented disclosure of the findings of classified documents in Biden's home and former office has raised suspicions and sparked criticism against the president, who's appeared frustrated to answer questions about the topic.
Responding to reporters' questions last week, Biden described the incident as "a handful of documents [...] filed in the wrong place."
About the writer
Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on the U.S. economy, housing market, property ... Read more