As the Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to’stonewall’ the Senate Intelligence Committee from analyzing secret materials seized at Biden, Donald Trump, and Mike Pence’s residences, Democrats are now targeting Joe Biden.
The Biden administration was aware of the several House Republican investigations but was not expecting that the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, would also focus on the White House.
Over the weekend, the DOJ wrote to the Senate panel in an effort to curry favor with the Democrats, but Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner claimed the letter was insufficient to appease the panel.
On Monday night, Warner said to Punchbowl News, “I appreciate the communication.” However, the communication’s topic leaves me uncertain as to how and when we will be able to meet our responsibility.
He said that he has been pressuring the Biden administration to offer a briefing and damage assessment for months, even going so far as to claim that he has made these requests with the condition that no material be released that might jeopardize existing criminal investigations.
When asked whether he would testify in the special counsel’s probe into classified information, Biden dismissed the notion.
He waved to reporters at the White House and said, “Oh, I don’t even know about the special counsel.”
The investigation into how and why Biden had papers with secret markings in his possession will start this week, according to special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland on January 12.
In order to reply to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request “without jeopardizing the existing special counsel investigations,” DOJ legislative affairs head Carlos Uriarte said in the letter his commitment to collaboration and close collaboration with the Director of National Intelligence.
The primary responsibility of the Senate Intelligence Committee is to supervise the American intelligence community. and, week, and, an a s and at i., in theal tta t
Democrats on the panel have joined the Republicans in requesting access to the sensitive materials that have recently been discovered at the residences of President Biden, Former President Trump, and Former Vice President Mike Pence.
The committee’s senior Republican, Senator Marco Rubio, called the DOJ letter “crazy.”
The Florida congressman said, “We’re not going to sit around here for weeks receiving the Heisman from these people.”
Rubio said that Biden’s DOJ is testing his patience and stated that the committee most certainly already has access to the material from the records.
Just days after the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Warner and Rubio first requested a briefing and damage assessment from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’ office in August.
They’re furious because they’ve been waiting for more than five months.
Senior Democratic member of the Intel Committee, Senator Ron Wyden, called the letter a “total non-starter” and an effort to “stonewall” the panel.
You must have access to the records just from a counterintelligence perspective, which is one of the most crucial components of national security, Wyden told Punchbowl. The situation was not close.
If the Biden administration uses similar strategy in the future, Republicans have promised to obstruct nominations and legislative activity.
However, because they dominate the upper house, Democrats, who are becoming more frustrated with the Biden administration, will ultimately decide how to continue.
As overseers, “we have a right to inspect [the records],” added Rubio. “And we’ll have to take necessary steps if we don’t obtain it and they’re preventing us from performing our duties,” he said.
We’re now looking for a solution that doesn’t result in that. However, on sometimes things don’t turn out that way, and you have to take action,’ he said. I do not want to do anything. But we’ll take action.
Warner and Rubio are both incensed that even the media knows more about the papers than their panel does.
The idea that we would be left in uncertainty and unable to do our duties, as Warner put it in a joint interview, “simply cannot stand.”
There isn’t a day that goes by when there isn’t some media article regarding what was discovered where and how the material was described in the press, according to Rubio. “I just spotted one again this morning.”
The Florida Republican senator said, “In some strange way, the only individuals who are not entitled to know what was in there are congressional oversight committees.”
However, it seems that the DOJ is letting information about some of the files that were uncovered and what the parties involved are saying to the media freely leak to the media. Because of this, I believe a solution to the intolerable situation is necessary.
In the pre-recorded sit-down interview with CBS’s Margaret Brennan, which aired on Face the Nation on Sunday morning, Rubio referred to it as “absurd.”
Warner responded by saying the claim that the information could be irrelevant since it dates back to Biden’s tenure as a senator “doesn’t hold water.”
The Virginia senator said that it is another evidence that the Senate has a problem with secret materials leaving the country.
Rubio is the ranking senator on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is chaired by Warner and remains under Democratic control.
Both leaders want to view the 300 secret papers that were discovered at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as the few dozen that were discovered at Biden’s house in Wilmington, Delaware, and the offices of his think tank, the Penn Biden Center, in Washington, D.C.
In his seat next to Rubio, Warner said, “This committee has a long history of carrying out its duties in a nonpartisan manner.” And this is our job: to supervise intelligence.
He said, “Our goal is not to find out whether someone mismanaged things, our duty is to make sure there is not an intelligence breach. The Justice Department has possessed the Trump records for approximately six months, the Biden materials for about three months.
Biden’s lawyers discovered perhaps 25–30 papers with secret markings at the president’s Wilmington home and his think tank offices in Washington, D.C., during the last several months. Although they were sent to the Justice Department beginning in November, the public did not learn about them until January, which was long after the 2022 midterm elections.
After thousands of papers and materials were confiscated during an FBI search at Trump’s Florida home in August, hundreds of the documents were later located there.
Additionally, former vice president Mike Pence said that comparable items were discovered at his Indiana residence.
The National Archives is said to be considering requiring searches of all living past presidents and vice presidents in light of the latest disclosures.
However, many in the intelligence community point out that the finding may point to a wider issue, which is that politicians at all levels of government may be able to remove papers marked as secret from safe areas.
»Democrats attack Biden for “stonewalling” confidential material«