In Docu-gate, Dems and GOP agree: Biden team must show files to Congress
Quin Hillyer
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Members of the Biden Administration should face serious consequences if they continue defying bipartisan congressional demands for intelligence information.
Repeat: Bipartisan — as was made clear again on the Sunday news shows. It is of course rare these days when key members of both parties in both chambers of Congress sing from the same sheet music. When they do, an administration of any party should take notice.
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At issue is information about the nature of the classified material improperly kept by President Biden, former President Donald Trump, and former Vice President Mike Pence. Congress created the nation’s intelligence system. Congress funds it. Congress has oversight authority related to it. The top leaders of Congress and of its intelligence committees have full security clearances, and by law they have a definite, independent right to know the nature of classified information of national importance.
Nonetheless, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and (apparently) Attorney General Merrick Garland are teaming up to tell Congress to stuff it. In bipartisan fashion, the intelligence committees had asked what topics were involved, and the level of seriousness of the classification thereof, in the improperly retained documents. Haines refused, saying that somehow the sharing of information with a tiny subset of security-cleared congressional leaders would impede the special counsel investigations into Biden’s and Trump’s handling thereof.
This is so specious as to be insulting, and it is constitutionally dangerous. At National Review Online, famed former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy explains this at much greater length than space here permits, but suffice it to say two things. First, there is almost no conceivable way that the sharing of such information in a secure room to a select group of congressional leaders could possibly interfere with those investigations. Second, Congress’ need for and right to the information absolutely supersedes the Justice Department’s investigative interests. Congress, the elected delegates of the public, has both a right and a duty to know and be able to react to the nature of the classified information that was put at risk.
The important development on the Sunday news shows was that, so far, Congress is not dividing into partisan corners on this subject, but instead it is standing firm for the institutional prerogatives it holds in trust for the public. On CBS’ Face the Nation, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Virginia’s Mark Warner and Florida’s Marco Rubio (respectively), sat, unified, for a joint interview in which both stressed that, in Warner’s words, the administration’s stonewalling effort “just cannot stand.”
Likewise from key members of the House. Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said on ABC’s This Week that “Congress has subpoena power, and its ability to compel the administration is absolute.” And on Fox News Sunday, Democrat Adam Smith of Washington State, who previously served on the Intelligence Committee, said Biden officials “absolutely … need to show us those documents.”
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This is worth, as the expression has it, “going to the mat” over. Congress needs to know if Donald Trump, in an act of bravado, showed Russian visitors a nuclear secret, or if Hunter Biden shared high-tech information with his Chinese business partners. Or whatever. Congress’ role is not to prosecute any crimes, but to try to assess and mitigate any damage done.
If the administration does not comply, Congress should push its own constitutional powers to the limit with the strongest possible enforcement of a “contempt of Congress” conviction. Both parties in Congress need to stay together on this. This is serious stuff. Serious enough that repeatedly recalcitrant officials should face imprisonment. Maximum security, please.