We don’t see a lot of agreement between Democrats and Republicans in Congress these days.
But there is one topic on which they are coming together: that the Biden administration is hindering their oversight efforts to examine the classified documents taken from Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Mike Pence. I reported on this before, how no one on the Senate Intelligence Committee was happy with the excuses that Biden Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has given for not complying. They said she’d told them that they can’t let them see the documents because of the ongoing separate special counsel investigations. But they weren’t buying it.
Now, the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner (D-VA), and the vice chair and ranking member Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) are speaking out together in a joint interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Warner said that that position by the DNI to leave them in “limbo” really “just cannot stand.” They needed to determine if national security had been compromised.
“I don’t know how congressional oversight on the documents, actually knowing what they are in any way impedes investigation,” added Rubio. “These are probably materials we already have access to, we just don’t know which ones they are. And it’s not about being nosy, you know, here’s the bottom line: if, in fact, those documents were very sensitive, the materials were sensitive, and they pose a counterintelligence or national security threat to the United States, then the intelligence agencies are tasked with the job of coming up with ways to mitigate that.”
“It’s an untenable situation that I think has to be resolved,” Rubio said.
Since some of the classified materials discovered in President Biden’s possession were from his days as a Senator, the argument that Senate Intel Cmte. members can’t view what was found until a special prosecutor allows it “doesn't hold water,” Sen. @MarkWarner says. pic.twitter.com/kyx6ZYygTS
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) January 29, 2023
Warner said that the Biden team’s excuse that they somehow have to wait until “until the special prosecutor somehow says it’s okay doesn’t hold water.” Such investigations could take years. Meanwhile, they can’t do their job to evaluate the potential damage to national security, if any.
“We have a right, as not only members of the Intelligence Committee, but as part of the leadership to view virtually every classified document,” he said. “But we’ve got a problem, in terms of both classification levels, how senior elected officials when they leave government, how they handle documents. We’ve had too many examples of this.”
Rubio said one of the options they had was to threaten the threatening funding from intelligence agencies to get the Biden administration to comply. Warner said that he would support that option.
“We’re going to figure out a way to make sure that we get that access so that we can not only tell the American people, but we’ve got another 85 U.S. senators who are not on the Intelligence Committee who look to us to get those assurances,” Warner said.
Now, one has to wonder why the Biden team wouldn’t come across to allow the Intelligence Committee to view the classified documents. The senators viewing the documents doesn’t harm the investigations. It is vitally important for their intelligence oversight and national security. I would speculate that perhaps the documents are such that they would raise more questions about Joe Biden — either they’re very bad with critical secret information and/or they’re related to the Biden family interests and could implicate other criminal problems for Joe Biden.
So let’s see if they come across and prove me wrong. But good for Warner for saying what needs to be said, and I hope they stick to their guns and force the issue if the Biden team continues on this cover-up path.
