Top lawmakers demand to know what was in classified documents found at Biden and Trump homes

The two heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee want access to classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago and at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington to make their own assessment of the security risks.

The senators, Democratic Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia and Republican Vice President Marco Rubio, are pressing Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide the information as the Justice Department withholds information about the contents of the documents in waiting for your inquiry.

Warner told CBS in a joint interview that the status quo “can’t stand.” She said they didn’t have a timeline for when they might have access to the document.

“Our job is not to find out if someone mishandled them,” said Warner, who receives information on the nation’s best-kept secrets. Our job is to make sure there’s no intelligence compromise.

He spoke after Haines briefed lawmakers on the situation. It all comes after the National Archives is considering requiring all living former presidents and vice presidents to conduct a government material search.

“And while the director of national intelligence had been willing to inform us before, now that you have the special counsel, the idea that we’re going to be stuck in limbo and we can’t do our job, that just can’t.” booth,” he added, speaking to CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ in an interview to air on Sunday.

Rubio made a similar pitch. His panel maintains oversight of the intelligence community.

“These are probably materials that we already have access to,” he observed. We just don’t know what they are. And it’s not being nosy. You know, here’s the bottom line: If, in fact, those documents were highly sensitive materials, they were confidential, and they pose a counterintelligence or national security threat, then intelligence agencies are tasked with finding ways to mitigate that. .’

“These are probably materials that we already have access to,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said.

The two leaders of the Senate Intel panel want access to the information to assess any security risks

There have been limited details via leaks about what is included in the documents that have been discovered over a period of months.

Among the hundreds of documents marked “classified” discovered during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago were former President Donald Trump’s “love letters” to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and the letter that former President Obama left inside the Resolute Desk on Trump’s first day in office.

Documents discovered in Biden’s headquarters at Penn Biden include material from his time as Vice President and as a United States Senator.

The DOJ has had the Trump documents for six months, Warner noted, and the Biden documents for about half that time.

Documents discovered at the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence allegedly include briefing materials about trips abroad he took as vice president.

His push comes after a number of lawmakers, including Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, began criticizing Biden for having material marked as classified inside his Wilmington garage and former DC office.

The DNI office will have to weigh the potential for Capitol Hill leaks in highly charged investigations, as well as whether sharing the content of the information could interfere with separate investigations being conducted by special counsel Jack Smith and Robert Hur into Trump and Biden. respectively.

The DNI office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.