House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman James Comer of Kentucky is demanding donation records and visitor logs from the Washington, D.C., think tank where classified documents were found in November 2022.
President Joe Biden’s attorneys found classified documents in his office at the Penn Biden Center, a foreign policy-focused think tank initially affiliated with the then-former vice president. The documents’ discovery did not become public until early January, shortly before more classified documents were found in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Robert Hur to investigate Biden’s apparent mishandling of the documents, although congressional Republicans have vowed to carry out their own investigations.
“President Biden’s pattern of mishandling classified documents is alarming. The Committee is concerned about who had access to these documents given the Biden family’s financial connections to foreign actors and companies,” Comer wrote Wednesday in a letter to University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill.
🚨@RepJamesComer calls on the University of Pennsylvania to give info on anonymous Chinese donations to UPenn and the @PennBiden Center.
Chinese donations skyrocketed after the Biden Center opened.⁰
Are these donations influencing Biden Admin policies?https://t.co/lzZzS6kuIv— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) January 18, 2023
The University of Pennsylvania has received $51 million in anonymous foreign donations since Biden assumed the presidency, including $14 million from China and Hong Kong, $2.4 million from Saudi Arabia, and $1 million from the Cayman Islands. The school also received $61 million from anonymous Chinese donors from 2017-2020. Comer is requesting that all information about the Chinese donations, including the names of the donors, be made available to Oversight Committee Republicans.
Comer noted several high-ranking Biden administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, who the Penn Biden Center employed.
“The Committee is concerned top UPenn officials offered lucrative, foreign–funded salaries to President Biden’s closest political allies to secure senior posts in a future Biden Administration and foreign actors funded those salaries to influence a future government,” he added.
The Penn Biden Center did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on the matter. (RELATED: REPORT: DOJ Decided Against Having FBI Agents Monitor Biden’s Lawyers As They Rifled Through Classified Docs)
In addition to the donor records, Comer is also requesting that the university provide information about individuals who accessed the center, including employees and visitors. The White House has already rebuffed a request for visitor logs from Biden’s Delaware home, saying that they do not maintain such records for the president’s private residence.