Senators livid Biden administration ‘stonewalling’ them on classified documents
Ryan King
Video Embed
Senators from both parties are growing impatient with the intelligence community’s alleged refusal to show them classified material recovered from multiple administrations.
Some are alleging that even members with the highest security clearance, such as those who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, are being obstructed from reviewing the recent batches of classified files recovered from President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
MARK WARNER CALLS FOR BRIEFING ON BOTH TRUMP AND BIDEN’S DOCUMENT CONTROVERSIES
“I’m very disappointed with the lack of detail and a timeline on when we’re going to get a briefing, not on anything dealing with criminality — that’s an appropriate Department of Justice responsibility — but it is our responsibility to make sure that we, in our role as intelligence oversight, know if there’s been any intelligence compromise,” Mark Warner (D-VA), who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, per ABC.
Warner previously vented his frustrations that the powerful committee was not granted the ability to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago after the bombshell search on Aug. 8, 2022.
“Every member of the committee, regardless of Democrat or Republican, [was] unanimous in that this position that we are left in … until somehow a special counsel designates that it’s OK for us to get briefed, is not going to stand,” Warner added. “And all things will be on the table to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Keeping “all things on the table” could be a nod to his colleague, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who has vowed to stymie Biden’s nominees in the Senate by refusing to fast track them out of protest for the “stonewalling” of the Senate’s demands to be better briefed on the seized classified material.
“There’s no reason why Congress cannot review these documents in a secure, classified setting so we can make an assessment about what damage it may have caused to national security,” Cotton said.
Warner supported Cotton’s remarks, saying that the panel has received briefings on very sensitive national security matters. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL) has also slammed the Department of National Intelligence for its “untenable” position of concealing the documents from them.
“It cannot be that your answer is that ‘we can’t tell you what was discovered until the special counsel allows us to.’ The information we’re asking for has no bearing whatsoever, that would interfere in no way, with a criminal investigation,” Rubio said.
Multiple batches of documents with classified markings stemming from Biden’s vice presidential days have been recovered at his think tank office in Washington, D.C., as well as his residence in Wilmington, Delaware. Additionally, hundreds of pages worth of documents were confiscated throughout the course of last year from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Some of those files reportedly included top-secret information.
Subsequent reports have also indicated that classified material was found at the residences of former President Jimmy Carter and former Vice President Mike Pence. The Justice Department has tasked special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s document debacle and special counsel Robert Hur to investigate Biden’s.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Members of Congress have also sought risk assessments of the classified discoveries. In the House, Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and his counterpart, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), have initiated investigations into the Biden classified documents situation.
Trump has denied accusations of wrongdoing, and Biden has insisted he is fully cooperating with the DOJ review.