House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-OK) pressed the White House on Tuesday about whether aides pressured the National Archives and Records Administration to stay quiet about President Joe Biden’s mishandled classified documents.

Comer questioned why a draft statement written by archives officials never became public at the time news broke about the discovery of classified records in Biden’s home, even though the agency released a public statement almost immediately after news broke about the discovery of classified documents in former President Donald Trump’s home.

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“The Committee is concerned about President Biden’s lack of transparency given the serious national security implications of his conduct,” Comer wrote.

In his letter this week to White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, Comer included excerpts from a transcribed interview his committee had conducted in January with the National Archives’s top lawyer.

The lawyer, Gary Stern, told the committee “that someone outside of NARA withheld [the draft statement’s] release,” Comer noted.

According to the excerpt of the interview transcript, Stern had blamed Justice Department guidance when declining to answer lawmakers’ questions about who instructed the National Archives not to release the statement it had drafted.

“According to the [Justice Department] guidance, I’m not supposed to talk about the, you know, content of our communications with other parties,” Stern had said.

Comer has previously questioned why the National Archives was seemingly more aggressive in its handling of missing Trump documents than in a similar case involving missing Biden documents.

The National Archives, like other agencies that played a role in the two classified documents sagas, has cited the existence of special counsel investigations in its refusal to cooperate with some House GOP requests.

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Comer asked Zients to provide the identity of the White House aide, if Biden’s team was indeed involved, who requested that the archives staff not release a public statement about Biden’s classified documents.

Comer also asked for copies of all communications between the White House and the National Archives regarding the draft statement that never went public.