Rep. Michael Waltz: What Turned Joe Biden's 'High-Priced Attorneys' Into a 'Cleaning Crew?'

(CNSNews.com) – The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Attorney General Merrick Garland considered having FBI agents accompany Joe Biden’s personal attorneys as they searched for classified documents at Biden’s two Delaware homes, “but decided against it, both to avoid complicating later stages of the investigation and because Mr. Biden’s attorneys had quickly turned over a first batch and were cooperating, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Republicans, including Rep. Michael Waltz (Fla.) have a big problem with the Justice Department’s hands-off decision: “We are going to get to the bottom of several key things,” Waltz told Fox News early Wednesday morning:

“One, I’m still dying to know why thousand-dollar-an-hour, high-priced attorneys were cleaning out Biden’s office in the first place after five years of those documents sitting there. So, what drove that? And there’s a lot of talk — was it subpoenas from the Hunter Biden investigation that suddenly turned these lawyers into a cleaning crew to start combing through every document. So, what happened there? 

“I know from my time in the White House years ago that there are logs and there’s a tracking system for top secret, especially top secret compartmented information that goes to the president and the vice president. We should be requesting those, and I suspect you’ll see (Judiciary Committee Chairman) Jim Jordan doing that very quickly. And I want him to see a damage assessment from the intelligence community on exactly what these documents were and what sources and methods it exposed. 

“I think those are reasonable requests. And the White House is not going to be able to dodge this issue.” 

Waltz, asked about the DOJ refusal to send FBI agents along with the clean-up attorneys, said Democrats expect Americans to simply “accept” what Biden’s personal attorneys tell them:

“You know, the left is making much of, well, it was only 20 documents. Well, how do we know that?” Waltz asked.

“I guess we have to take that at face value now. And the White House was too nervous to have a federal agent, at least alongside the attorneys, because…anything that the Bureau sees could also be constituted as a potential crime. So they decided not to have them there at all, and the rest of the world and Americans have to just take Biden’s attorneys at face value.” 

Waltz noted that Biden’s attorneys lacked the security clearance required to read the documents they ended up finding.

Ethics complaint

A government watchdog group on Tuesday filed an ethics complaint alleging that “taxpayer resources may have been inappropriately used and untenable conflicts of interest created by the involvement of senior White House lawyers in a matter that could personally benefit President Joe Biden.”

The White House Counsel’s Office is not the President’s personal law firm,” Protect the Public’s Trust complained.

“It does not represent the President in purely personal matters that are separate from his role as President. Yet, the White House Counsel’s Office appears to be acting as lawyers to Joe Biden, private citizen, rather than President Biden in this matter.”

PPT noted that Richard Sauber, the special counsel to the president in the Office of White House Counsel, “has given numerous public statements and the White House Press Secretary has repeatedly referred to Mr. Sauber as ‘his,’ meaning President Biden’s, lawyer and referred reporters to Mr. Sauber and the White House Counsel’s Office, rather than the President’s personal lawyers, for comment.

“The involvement of the White House Counsel’s Office in a personal legal matter involving the President for activity that took place while he was a private citizen raises several serious legal questions and concerns, including who the (White House Counsel Office’s) client is in this matter.”

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