White House: Biden's Delaware house kept no visitors log

US President Joe Biden didn't have a visitors log at his Delaware house to record who visited the property while he had classified documents on the premises, the White House counsel said Monday.

Republicans had asked that Biden turn over any visitor logs that would detail who visited his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware, or his Washington DC office while the locations contained classified documents that related to his time as vice-president in the Obama administration.

It came after the White House confirmed that it had found five more pages — six altogether — of classified documents in Biden's personal library at his Wilmington home on Jan 12.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, wrote White House chief of staff Ron Klain asking for any visitor logs dated from January 2021 at Biden's house as well as clarity on the documents found.

Comer wrote: "It is troubling that classified documents have been improperly stored at the home of President Biden for at least six years, raising questions about who may have reviewed or had access to classified information.

"As chief of staff, you are head of the executive office of the president and bear responsibility to be transparent with the American people on these important issues related to the White House's handling of this matter."

The White House counsel's office said in a statement: "Like every president across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal.

"But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them."

Former president Donald Trump instructed his administration not to release visitor's logs at the start of his presidency, citing "grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually".

Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the Secret Service also confirmed that it doesn't have access to nor maintains visitors logs for Biden's home because it is a private residence and not government property. The agency does provide security for the house and screens visitors before they arrive, according to CNN.

Following the discovery of a third set of documents at Biden's home, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement on Saturday: "President Biden's personal attorneys have followed a process, coordinated with the Archives and the Department of Justice, to review documents at the Penn Biden Center and the president's Delaware residences."

Amid criticism of the slow release of information from the White House on the matter, Sauber explained that the president's personal attorneys who conducted the searches don't have active security clearances.

If they identified a document with a classified marking, they stopped and didn't review it, and "suspended any further search in that box, file or other specific space where the document was found, as appropriate'', he said.

Sauber, who does have security clearance, said he went to Wilmington on the evening of Jan 12 to help provide the document found the previous day to the Justice Department. During that search, Sauber found five additional pages with classification markings among the material.

Aides had previously said that they had found only one document in Biden's personal library and more in the garage of his Wilmington house.

The first batch of 10 classified documents were discovered by Biden's lawyers in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement on Nov 2, but were not made public until a CBS News report on Jan 9.

The think tank has headquarters at the University of Pennsylvania and was used by Biden occasionally from 2017 until he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur, special counsel on Jan 12 to investigate the matter. Sauber said that any further inquiries would be handled by the special counsel.

A separate special counsel, Jack Smith, is leading the investigation of Trump, who had 300 documents, many of which were classified, at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago.