House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., suggested Sunday that ‘influence peddling’ in the Trump administration will be part of the Republicans’ investigations in the new GOP-controlled House.

During an appearance on CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ Comer spoke about the committee’s investigation into the Biden family’s domestic and international business dealings, as well as President Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Anchor Jake Tapper asked the congressman why he was not investigating former President Trump, whose Florida home was raided over classified documents.

‘I mean, there are questions about influence peddling when it comes to the Trump family,’ Tapper said. ‘There’s questions about visitor logs when it comes to Mar-a-Lago.’

Comer suggested Trump would also be under the microscope.

‘And I think the influence peddling with respect to the Trump administration will be a part of our overall investigation, because both Democrats and Republicans have complained about this with the previous two administrations,’ he said. ‘So something needs to be done. Also, something needs to be done with respect to how classified documents leave the White House and go to the post-presidency…. That’s another issue we will try to fix from a legislative point of view.’

Comer then hedged a bit, saying he did not feel like a ‘whole lot of time’ needed to be spent on Trump.

‘But with respect to investigating President Trump,’ he continued, ‘there have been so many investigations of President Trump I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years. So no one’s been investigated more than Donald Trump. Who hasn’t been investigated is Joe Biden. And that’s why we’re finally launching an investigation of Joe Biden, the House Oversight Committee, one investigation, and I hope to have it wrapped up as soon as possible.’

Comer reportedly sent a letter Sunday to White House chief of staff Ron Klain requesting more documents and communications related to the discoveries of multiple Obama-era classified documents in multiple locations at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. The first discovery was made on Nov. 2, just six days before the midterm elections, but it wasn’t made public until CBS reported on it last Monday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland last week appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s alleged mishandling of the documents. 

Comer said he did not know yet whether Biden broke the law but accused the White House of not being transparent. 

‘Why didn’t we hear about this on November 2nd when the first batch of classified documents were discovered?’ he asked. ‘Remember, they were quick to call for a special counsel prior to the midterm elections. And Joe Biden used it as his closing argument during the midterm elections that Republicans were a threat to democracy, and he cited the fact that President Trump mishandled the documents. While he was doing this, he knew very well that he himself had possession of classified documents. So the hypocrisy here is great. We’re very concerned about a lack of transparency. We’re very concerned, as I’ve said many times, about a two-tier system of justice in America. And we just want equal treatment. And hopefully we’ll get some answers very soon.’

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., on Sunday said Attorney General Merrick Garland made the right move in appointing a special counsel to investigate the three sets of classified documents discovered in President Biden’s former office space and his home.

Schiff, the outgoing chair of the House Intelligence Committee, made the remarks during an interview on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ saying that the special counsel may have been Garland’s only move.

‘I do think it’s the right move,’ the California Democrat said. ‘The attorney general has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public. And here I don’t think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel.’

On Saturday, Biden’s attorneys announced that a third trove of classified documents was found at the president’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware. Additional classified documents were previously found in Biden’s garage and at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. 

The discoveries have led to accusations from Republicans that Biden ‘mishandled’ classified materials in the same way that former President Donald Trump was accused of doing, although Democrats dispute this comparison. 

‘I think it’s important to point out that the Biden approach was very different in the sense that it looks, as far as we can tell, that it was inadvertent, that these documents were in these locations,’ Schiff said. ‘When they were discovered, they were immediately provided to the archives or to the Justice Department. There was no effort to hold on to them, no effort to conceal them, no effort to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation.’ 

The congressman added: ‘All of that is a very sharp contrast to Donald Trump’s handling of the situation.’

In August, FBI agents conducting a search retrieved 33 boxes holding approximately 300 documents with classified markings from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, which the former president had not turned over to the National Archives, as required by law.

While Schiff said he believes that Biden has handled the situation differently than Trump, he believes that Congress ‘ought to handle both situations the same way’ and conduct its own review in both cases.

‘I still would like to see Congress do its own assessment of and receive an assessment from the intelligence community of whether there was an exposure to others of these documents, whether it was harm to national security in the case of either set of documents with either president,’ the congressman said.

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who previously served as House impeachment counsel against former President Donald Trump, lauded the Biden administration for how they have been handling the matter of classified documents at President Biden’s home – contrasting this with a similar matter involving Trump.

Last week, Goldman had said appointing a special counsel in the Biden case would not be necessary, but now that Robert Hur has been put in that role, Goldman supported the decision.

‘I don’t think it was a mistake. I don’t think any of us really have a good understanding of what information the attorney general had when he decided to appoint Mr. Hur as the special counsel,’ Goldman told ‘Face the Nation’ host Margaret Brennan in a CBS interview. ‘But I do think it goes to a really important fact that is being missed here, which is that this administration is doing things by the book. There is a divide and a separation between the Department of Justice and the White House that certainly did not exist in the last administration.’

Goldman elaborated by noting that Biden’s team reached out to the Justice Department and National Archives, saying that ‘they have done everything they can to cooperate.’ Goldman said this is ‘in direct contrast to what former President Trump has done, where he has obstructed justice at every turn.’

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was raided by the FBI last year, and federal authorities recovered classified documents from the premises. Trump and his team have claimed that the former president had been working with the National Archives prior to the raid.

Brennan asked Goldman about an op-ed he wrote last year about the Trump raid, in which he outlined four criteria by which to assess the situation. These included whether there was intent to distribute the materials, clear knowledge of the importance of the documents, the volume of the material, and whether anyone lied to investigators. Goldman said that these same criteria ‘absolutely’ should be applied to Biden.

Despite acknowledging earlier in the interview that he did not have all the information Attorney General Merrick Garland had when he appointed Hur, Goldman expressed confidence Biden is in the clear when it comes to his criteria of investigation.

‘Those four factors, I believe, apply to President Trump, and none of them apply to President Biden,’ Goldman said.

One question that Goldman did not have an answer for was why Biden’s personal lawyers – who did not have security clearance – were searching his home for classified documents.

I’m not sure. And we don’t know the circumstances of that,’ the former federal prosecutor said. ‘But certainly the documents leave the vice president’s office and have to be stored somewhere. I do hope we will find out more information about it.’

Goldman did, however, cite a statement from Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer, saying that it showed Biden’s team is ‘doing everything by the book.’

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Black Republican, is calling out Democrats’ treatment of other Black and minority conservatives as the GOP continues to make gains in communities that have traditionally voted Democratic.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Cameron, a candidate hoping to unseat vulnerable Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in this year’s election, argued a person should be judged on values rather than skin color and that the patriotism, common sense and fair play of the Republican Party were also important to the fabric of the nation and Kentucky.

‘I think, for far too long, some Democrats have tried to ask folks that look like me to vote in one specific way, and if you don’t, and if you express a difference of opinion or thought, then they recoil at that, and they give you a lot of grief on Twitter and other social media platforms,’ Cameron told Fox. 

‘But I hope what I’ve demonstrated, whether in my time as running for attorney general and winning that race, or even now as I run for governor, is that here in Kentucky we don’t care what you look like, we care about your values.’ 

Republicans have continued to make gains among minority communities across the country, much to the frustration of Democrats. The GOP had its most diverse slate of candidates ever in last year’s midterm elections.

With those gains, minority Republicans have increasingly faced Democrats’ scrutiny, including facing demeaning name-calling and being excluded from groups like the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

In 2021, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., another Black Republican, was called ‘Uncle Tim’ on social media in reference to the derogatory phrase ‘Uncle Tom,’ which has been historically used for Blacks viewed as deferential to Whites.

During the race for House speaker earlier this month, Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., was called ‘a prop’ by far-left ‘Squad’ member Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., after he was nominated by peers for the position. After taking office in 2021, Donalds was also denied entry into the CBC, which is made up completely of Black Democrats despite claiming to be bipartisan.

After rejecting such characterizations, Cameron praised the history of the Republican Party and the role he said ‘common sense and fair play’ have played within the party.

‘I firmly and fully believe in the American spirit and the innovative spirit of the hardworking men and women all across this country. In fact, I often talk about the role that common sense and fair play have played in the Republican Party,’ Cameron said. 

‘It was common sense and fair play that told Abraham Lincoln that this nation couldn’t live up to its founding unless it got rid of slavery. It was common sense and fair play that told Teddy Roosevelt that the financial health and interest of this country couldn’t just be held in the hands of a few in big business. It was common sense and fair play that told Ronald Reagan that he had to get the thumbs of the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., off the backs of the hardworking men and women of this country. Otherwise, we were going to lose that patriotic and innovative spirit.

‘So patriotism is important to the fabric of the commonwealth. We’ve got a lot of pride in this state — in our history — and we value the rights that are given to us by God. And I want to be a governor that recognizes and shares those values with the men, women and children of all 120 counties.’

Cameron is facing 11 other Republicans in the gubernatorial primary race, including former U.N. Ambassador Kelly Craft, state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles and state Auditor Mike Harmon.

The Republican primary will be held Tuesday, May 16. The winner is expected to face Beshear in the November general election.

Law professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley reacted to news that even more classified information has been discovered at President Joe Biden’s home, saying it suggests the White House does not take classified information seriously.

‘This latest disclosure further undermines the mantra from the White House that this is a president who ‘takes classified documents very seriously,” the George Washington University professor posted Saturday.  ‘According to the lawyer, more documents were discovered in the process of just turning over previously discovered documents.

‘The account shows that, over two months after the first discovery, the Biden team still did not complete a thorough search. It is chilling to think how the President would have proceeded if he didn’t ‘take classified documents seriously.”

Turley added that ‘eventually’ the ‘surprises become a bit less surprising.’

Turley also posted on Twitter that the ‘continuing discoveries again raise questions over Biden relying on private counsel for these searches.’

Turley’s tweets came after the American public learned five pages of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president were found at his Wilmington, Delaware, home in addition to the classified documents already found in the home’s garage next to his 1967 Corvette Stingray and at one of his offices in Washington, D.C. 

The White House has insisted it has handled the situation and the fallout in a ‘transparent’ fashion and maintained that Biden ‘takes this very, very seriously.’

Critics have alleged the Biden administration should have notified the public Nov. 2 that the classified documents were found and suggest that didn’t happen because of the negative press it would receive days before the midterm elections. 

Critics have also pointed out President Biden strongly criticized former President Trump for having classified information at his home that the FBI ultimately collected during a raid.

On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney, as special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents.

President Biden’s past week was riddled with controversy, including a halt of domestic flights due to an FAA system failure, his administration’s recommendation of a gas stove ban, the discovery of classified documents from his time as vice president and the launch of multiple federal investigations into his mishandling of important government materials. 

Here is a look at the 80-year-old president’s latest struggles.

The discovery of classified documents

The White House Counsel’s Office confirmed last week that three batches of classified materials from Biden were recovered: one at his Washington, D.C., think tank, the Penn Biden Center, in early November and two at his Wilmington, Delaware, property.

The news of the first batch of documents broke Monday, which detailed how the documents were recovered by Biden’s lawyers at the Penn Biden Center days before the election. 

The news of a second batch of classified documents found in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home broke Wednesday. Biden’s son, Hunter, who is under federal investigation for tax fraud, claimed in emails he owns the Wilmington house where additional classified documents from Joe Biden’s vice presidency during the Obama administration were discovered.

The president’s special counsel announced that another batch of documents was recovered at the Wilmington residence. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement that five pages of classified documents were found at Biden’s home Thursday, which marks a total of six classified documents retrieved from there.

‘Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday evening to facilitate providing the document the president’s personal counsel found on Wednesday to the Justice Department,’ Sauber said in a statement Saturday. ‘While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages. The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.’

Biden claims he does not know what the documents contain because his lawyers advised him not to ask. According to the White House, the documents were turned over to the National Archives. It is unclear when these documents were placed at the two locations and if there are more to be recovered. 

The launch of a special counsel investigation

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday the launch of a special prosecutor investigation into the president’s classified documents. 

The Justice Department had been investigating the matter but elevated it to a special prosecutor after the recovery of a second batch of documents was revealed. Garland chose Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney, to head the investigation. 

Giancarlo Sopo, founder of Visto Media and former head of Hispanic advertising for former President Trump, said Biden was unable to capitalize on GOP struggles in previous weeks.

‘The new year is off to a rough start for President Biden,’ Sopo told Fox News Digital. ‘Whatever bounce he may have had from the GOP’s lackluster midterms and the drawn-out speaker election may be dissipating. The timing of the classified documents controversy is especially bad for him in light of his rumored 2024 announcement since it neutralizes what was going to be one of his primary lines of attack against former President Trump.’

The new Republican majority in the House unifies to pass agenda

The Republican majority passed a bill Monday to cut back $72 billion in funds to hire tens of thousands of IRS staff over the next decade.

The White House announced Monday it would oppose the bill, which it claimed empowers the wealthy class to dodge taxes.

‘Far from protecting middle-class families or small businesses, H.R. 23 protects wealthy tax cheats at the expense of honest, middle-class taxpayers,’ the White House said in a statement. ‘With their first economic legislation of the new Congress, House Republicans are making clear that their top economic priority is to allow the rich and multibillion-dollar corporations to skip out on their taxes, while making life harder for ordinary, middle-class families that pay the taxes they owe.’

The House is set to take up a vote on another tax bill that would abolish the IRS and eliminate the national income tax, a move the White House said it ‘adamantly opposes.’

‘President Biden adamantly opposes House Republicans’ plans to force an unprecedented tax hike onto middle-class families in exchange for yet more tax welfare for the rich and big corporations,’ White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital Wednesday.

House Republicans passed a resolution Tuesday to establish a new Judiciary subcommittee that will oversee how the executive branch investigates and collects information on American citizens. The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will be led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who will also chair the Judiciary Committee at-large. 

House Republicans passed another bill Wednesday, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, that requires immediate medical attention for babies who are born alive after a failed abortion. Democrats criticized the bill as an interference in women’s health care.

‘House Republicans passed an extreme bill today that will further jeopardize the right to reproductive health care in our country,’ Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted about the bill. ‘This is yet another attempt by Republican legislators to control women’s bodies.’

House moves in bipartisan fashion to oversee handling of China

The House passed one key measure this week in bipartisan fashion that may undercut the foreign policy agenda of the Biden administration.

The House, in a 365-65 vote Tuesday, launched a new committee to examine U.S. strategic competition with China. The committee will investigate how the U.S. can compete with China’s growing economic influence and counter the communist country’s human rights violations. 

‘While I do have concerns here after reading the resolution itself, I will be voting ‘yes,’’ Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said. ‘The Democratic Party has led the way in implementing efforts to monitor China’s compliance with international human rights and rule of law standards, and we will continue to do so here.’

Another airline disaster

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) paused takeoffs at airports nationwide for several hours Wednesday morning after its Notice to Air Missions System, which sends necessary messages to all pilots, crashed. The agency was able to fix the system, but not until after thousands of flights were delayed and canceled. 

The agency, which has a $23.5 billion budget, runs under Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation.

The struggles came weeks after Southwest Airlines canceled more than 15,000 flights during the holiday season as winter weather and internal issues caused a mass panic that left travelers stranded without their belongings. 

A failed push to ban gas stoves

Richard Trumka Jr., the chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and son of Biden’s late labor union ally, Richard Trumka, told Bloomberg this week that a ban on gas stoves was possible and ‘any option is on the table.’ But Trumka backtracked on the possibility after a wave of backlash.

‘Over the past several days, there has been a lot of attention paid to gas stove emissions and to the Consumer Product Safety Commission,’ Trumka said. ‘Research indicates that emissions from gas stoves can be hazardous, and the CPSC is looking for ways to reduce related indoor air quality hazards. But, to be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves, and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.’

The suggestion of a gas stove ban followed a letter from 22 congressional Democrats to the CPSC to consider increased regulations of gas stoves, which they claimed cause a risk to consumers through ‘indoor air pollution.’

The Democrats suggested regulations on gas stoves such as required range hoods, new performance standards related to hazardous emissions and required labels that detail health risks.

Brendan Steinhauser, chief strategy officer for Young Americans for Liberty, said he expects Biden’s struggles to continue this year.

‘President Biden had a terrible week. From mishandling classified documents in his (or Hunter’s) garage, to his administration’s talk of banning gas stoves, to his too little too late border photo op, the president is reeling from one of the roughest weeks of his presidency,’ Steinhauser told Fox News Digital. 

‘But what should we expect when an incompetent career politician with an incredibly corrupt family is elevated to the presidency? I don’t think this bad news is going away anytime soon.’

The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear the case of a Guatemalan transgender woman who is seeking to avoid deportation from the U.S. after a lower court said she didn’t go through the proper process to demonstrate she would be persecuted in her home country if she were deported.

The nine justices will ultimately be deciding a technical requirement of U.S. immigration law that says migrants must exhaust ‘all administrative remedies available’ before appealing their immigration decisions in the courts.

The Biden administration, a champion for LGBTQ rights, finds itself at odds with a transgender immigrant who entered the U.S. illegally and is trying to stay, claiming fear of persecution because of her sexual identity.

The plaintiff, Leon Santos-Zacaria, is a transgender woman who claims she was raped and received death threats because of her gender identity and sexual orientation in her native Guatemala.

She allegedly fled to the United States and sought to remain permanently under a statute that offers protection to immigrants if they can prove they are or will be persecuted in their native country because of ‘race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.’

An immigration judge found Santos-Zacaria’s claims ‘credible’ but her court documents say the judge ‘inexplicably ruled that she did not suffer past persecution, and thus was not entitled to a presumption of future persecution.’

Santos-Zacaria appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeal (BIA), which disagreed with the judge’s ruling on past persecution but still denied her appeal and determined that she ‘had not shown she would be persecuted in the future.’

Santos-Zacaria appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which denied her claim because she didn’t follow a U.S. statute that says she needed to exhaust all remedies with the BIA and that she should have filed what’s known as a ‘motion to reconsider’ with the BIA.

The Justice Department is arguing that Santos-Zacaria, even after making claims about persecution, had testified she was open to voluntarily returning to Guatamala on three separate occasions since leaving as a teenager, undermining her arguments about possible persecution.

‘She specifically acknowledged that she could now register herself ‘as a woman’ in Guatemala ‘if [she] want[s] to be a woman now legally,’ the DOJ brief stated.

DOJ’s brief also said the Fifth Circuit judge observed that Santos-Zacaria ‘‘agreed that there was probably a place where she could safely relocate within Guatemala,’ a concession that was sufficient to rebut the presumption that petitioner’s life or freedom would be threatened if she returned there.’

DOJ argues that Santos-Zacaria didn’t raise her claims through the proper channel with the BIA and says the Supreme Court should uphold the Fifth Circuit’s decision.

Lawyers for Santos-Zacaria said DOJ’s position ‘creates a treacherous trap for vulnerable litigants, setting up landmines of administrative procedure …’

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET.

A former FBI assistant director is blasting the bureau for its ‘glaring disparity’ in how the agency has approached the situations surrounding President Biden and former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified materials.

The first batch of classified documents in Biden’s possession was found at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2, just before the 2022 midterm elections, and not revealed until Monday. A search of Biden’s garage at his Wilmington home was conducted on Dec. 20 and the remainder of the house, according to Biden’s lawyers, was searched this week, when additional documents were discovered. 

While Trump and Biden’s cases have key differences, Chris Swecker, who served for 24 years in the FBI as a special agent and retired from the bureau as assistant director for the criminal investigative division, told Fox News Digital Saturday that the Justice Department is handling things with Biden in a ‘genteel’ way.

Swecker, referring to the treatment received by Trump during the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago last year, said there is a ‘glaring disparity in how somewhat identical facts are treated when it comes to the Bidens.’

‘You know, it’s kid-gloves, it’s going about it in a very nice way, very genteel,’ Swecker said, noting that the Justice Department is seemingly allowing Biden allies to decide what is looked through and what isn’t, as well as what is taken from the properties and what isn’t.

‘This is yet another example, I think, of the genteel way the left and the right are handled,’ Swecker added.

Special Counsel to the president Richard Sauber disclosed in a statement Saturday that five additional pages of documents with classified markings were found at Biden’s Delaware home Thursday evening, making a total of six classified documents retrieved from the house — in addition to the documents discovered in the garage.

Sauber explained that when Biden’s personal attorneys identified one classified document at Biden’s home on Wednesday, they stopped searching for additional documents because they lacked the security clearances necessary to view those materials — bringing into question the seriousness of the issue and why the DOJ appears to not be assisting with the search of Biden’s residences or offices.

Under pressure from Republicans, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel Thursday to investigate the classified materials, which Biden claims were ‘inadvertently misplaced.’ Garland tapped Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney, to handle the investigation.

Biden’s cooperation with the DOJ as authorities investigate the classified documents has been praised by Democrats. Sauber stressed in his statement that Biden ‘takes classified information and materials seriously’ and said the president’s lawyers ‘will continue to cooperate’ with the special counsel’s investigation.

‘We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake,’ Sauber said.

‘Based on what we know now, Biden is unlikely ever to face charges, whereas Trump is at high risk because of his obstructive conduct and other factors absent from the Biden case,’ Norm Eisen, an ethics lawyer and counsel for House Democrats, wrote in a opinion column for CNN. ‘The cases have special counsels and classified documents in common — but little else.’

Trump, Eisen argued, resisted turning over the materials after months of discussions and a subpoena and insisted he had a right to keep them, while Biden said he was unaware that classified documents — at least the first set — were in his possession, and his lawyers voluntarily turned them over to the DOJ.

At the time of the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago, prior to public knowledge that he also had classified materials stashed away from his time as vice president, President Biden questioned how Trump could be so ‘irresponsible.’

Asked why the FBI is leaving the search of Biden’s Delaware residence for additional classified materials to White House aides, Swecker said there should have already ‘been an open investigation’ and that it reminds him of how the FBI treated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was able to avoid charges for her use of a private email server during her tenure.

‘This is a continuation of that kid-gloves, soft touch that they have with things to the left of the political aisle,’ he said. ‘On the right side, they come in with swat teams and search warrants and come hard. It shouldn’t be that way.’

‘I think it’s bad for the FBI to go using search warrants to do that sorta thing,’ he added. ‘They should subpoena and they should do this in a way that is short of conducting an outright raid. But that’s not what they did with Trump – they just raided his Mar-a-Lago residence.… If it’s good for Trump, it should have been good for Biden, as well. There is a disparity of how this very identical set of circumstances were handled.’

Swecker also said he believes the documents found at Mar-a-Lago were in a much safer spot than those found in Biden’s Delaware home, which served as his residence for the time between his role as vice president and president.

‘I think they were safer at Mar-a-Lago, I mean it took an FBI swat team to get in there,’ he said. ‘You can’t get in the gate. I’m sure there was a log there because he was still under Secret Service protection. [They] were locked inside a closet, the hotel has got cameras and security, so it’s buttoned down pretty doggone tight. They had made sure it was locked at the request of the archives and DOJ.’

‘Now a garage door, you can go out to any one of these tech places and you can program any garage door opener to open up any garage door, practically,’ Swecker added. ‘[Biden] wasn’t under Secret Service protection at the time, from my understanding, and the house was empty a lot of that time. That house was inherently insecure. It’s much less secure than Mar-a-Lago.’

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House.

EXCLUSIVE: The U.S. is more lenient than any European country when it comes to allowing children to access medical services for gender transitions, according to a new study.

The study, published by Do No Harm, a group that seeks to insulate the health care profession from ‘radical, diverse and discriminatory ideology,’ analyzed the laws of European countries and concluded ‘the United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children.’ Laws vary in the U.S. by state, but overall, transgender youth in America have greater access to gender clinics, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, oftentimes without parental consent.

Dr. William Malone, a board-certified endocrinologist, said the U.S. political environment discourages doctors from critiquing the use of unproven and risky medical interventions in youth because they fear backlash from influential medical associations and politicians.

‘We are dealing with what may be the biggest medical and ethical scandal of modern times,’ Malone told Fox News Digital. ‘Transgender medicine is big business, and youth who are transitioning today will be medical patients for life, for the next 60-plus years. Mental health among youth is at an all-time low, making them particularly vulnerable to solutions that suggest an ‘easy fix.’’

The Biden administration has declared gender-affirming treatment to minors to be ‘life-saving care,’ while some Republican-led states that have tried to limit access face legal challenges to those decisions. Meanwhile, several European countries have backtracked on the accessibility of transgender treatments for minors, the study notes.

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service last year announced it will close its only gender clinic for children and will move from an affirmation model to a focus on treating gender dysphoria with greater skepticism through psychotherapy. The country will discourage the use of social transitions in prepubescent children, and health services will require a wider range of medical input beyond gender experts, such as specialists in pediatrics, autism, neurodisability and mental health, before treating children for gender dysphoria.

In 2000, Finland announced it would deviate its approach to transgender youth from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and use psychotherapy as the primary treatment for children with gender dysphoria.

Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare updated guidelines in December to urge caution on transgender treatments for youth unless there is an ‘exceptional’ case of gender dysphoria. The board said there is insufficient evidence on what caused the dramatic increase in dysphoria for teenage girls and cited instances of detransition as a concern.

The French Academy of Medicine declared last year that more caution is needed to treat unprecedented increases in transgender youth and noted the challenge of identifying dysphoria as permanent or an adolescent phase.

Malone said the Biden administration’s approach to transgender medicine issues ‘does not make sense,’ adding invasive treatments should not be promoted until they’ve been proven to help more than harm.

‘We have jumped to hormones and surgery bypassing the most obvious alternative — therapy,’ Malone said ‘We need to take a step back and study these various interventions before we can determine the best way forward. This is just what Sweden, Finland and England have done, and we hope the U.S. will follow suit.’

The Biden administration has promoted puberty blocker and cross-gender hormone treatment drugs for transgender children even as it spent roughly $17 million on studies to analyze the dangers and uncertainties of the drugs from 2021 to 2022 through the National Institutes of Health. These dangers include the possibility of increased cardiovascular risks, weakened ability to fight sexually transmitted infections and infertility.

Moti Gorin, a bioethicist at Colorado State University, said transgender policy has become too politicized in the U.S. and that legislators should join European countries as they backtrack on treatments for transgender youth to better study the impacts.

‘It is very unusual in medicine to see such substantial international differences among wealthy countries in the approach their medical authorities take to treating patients,’ Gorin told Fox News Digital. ‘While major American medical organizations assert that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are safe and effective for treating gender dysphoric youth, some of these European countries, all of which have a more progressive climate for LGBT+ people, have taken a closer look at the evidence.

‘And they have come to a different conclusion. From an ethical standpoint, this is troubling because both approaches cannot be correct, which means some, perhaps many, of these vulnerable patients are not getting the right kind of care.’

Most states in the U.S. require parental consent for puberty blockers, which can begin as early as age 8. Oregon recognizes a right to puberty blockers for transgender youth who are 15 or older and can allow treatment without parental consent.

Most European countries, the study notes, do not issue puberty blockers without parental consent until age 18, and with parental consent at 16. However, Sweden allows access without consent at 12, Finland at 13 and Denmark and Ireland at 15.

Some U.S. states are attempting to restrict minor access to cross-gender hormone treatment, and others allow access with parental consent beginning at age 13.

Several U.S. states restrict minor access to transgender surgeries. More liberal states follow WPAT recommendations, which suggest surgeries can be conducted on transgender youth beginning at age 15. Surgeries for 14-year-olds have been documented in the U.S.

Nearly all European countries prohibit surgeries on transgender youth without parental consent because of their nationalized health care systems, which do not allow any surgeries without parental consent.

The U.S. has more than 60 pediatric gender clinics and 300 clinics that offer transgender treatments to minors, a sharp contrast to European nations, most of which have only one to three options for transgender youth.

Terry Schilling, president of American Principles Project, said the U.S. contrasts with Europe on transgender access because the American system can chase profit.

‘There’s no mistaking it now: Our medical industry and government authorities care more about ideology and profit than they do about the health and well-being of our kids,’ Schilling told Fox News Digital. ‘Hopefully, the looming cascade of malpractice lawsuits will finally convince them to return to sanity as Europe is now doing. Lawmakers in Congress and the states also need to start getting involved. For the sake of America’s families, it’s time to put a stop to this horrific experimentation.’