House Oversight Committee asks Secret Service to provide information on Trump, Pence's residence

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability ranking Democrat Jamie Raskin is asking the Secret Service to provide information about visitors to former President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence's personal residence since leaving office in light of the mishandling of sensitive, highly classified documents. In a letter to the agency's director, Kimberly Cheatle, Raskin, of Maryland, cites classified records found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last year and recent reports of classified documents found at Pence's Indiana home.

The committee is looking for information from the US Secret Service about who has access to former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club and former Vice President Pence's personal residence since he left office, because of the fact that the U.S. Secret Service provided protection for Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence during the time they stored classified materials at their respective residences.

Raskin gives a Feb. 14 deadline for the Secret Service to provide all documents and communications related to visitor information at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and Pence's home in Carmel, Indiana, from the time they left office.

In a news release, Raskin said he was part of the committee Democrats' ongoing investigation into the safeguarding of presidential and classified records. Raskin described the request as similar to the requests of House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. this month focusing on classified documents discovered at President Joe Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware.

The White House Counsel's Office told Comer last week that it was reviewing his requests and will cooperate with legitimate oversight, noting that it has fully cooperated with the National Archives and the Justice Department to ensure documents with classified markings were provided to the appropriate authorities.

White House counsel Stuart F. Delery wrote to Comer last week about the separation of powers and the statutory duties of the executive branch and the White House in general, with the goal of attempting to accommodate legitimate oversight interests within the committee's jurisdiction.

Delery suggested that there will be a limit to what the White House will be willing to share with Congress. He said that these considerations include the need to protect the integrity and independence of law enforcement investigations.

Raskin previously weighed in on Comer's request, saying it shouldn't turn into political football. People who say that there is no problem with what Donald Trump did, and that he believes that the committee will keep a sense of symmetry about our analysis of these situations and a sense of proportion about the underlying offenses, is upset by President Biden s voluntary and rapid turnover of a handful of documents that they found.