Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Newsmax on Tuesday night the federal government has a problem with the overclassification of documents, so much so the public is being prevented from hearing the truth about such subjects as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.
"I think it's more likely than not that we've classified so many documents that it's hard to find documents that are not classified," Paul told "Eric Bolling The Balance." "The one problem with classifying so much is that there is right now, to my knowledge, pretty good information out there in the intelligence community about the [coronovirus] originating from the lab in China.
"And yet they're classified to try to prohibit people from me giving you the information that we already know that this came from a lab."
Paul said the scope of what needs to be classified should be limited to information that could damage the nation, such as the names of intelligence agents in the field, or what countries or cities they are in.
"Most of the things that we're classifying are policy statements, and there's no real reason for them to be secret," Paul said.
Paul said the intelligence community overclassifies documents so it can retain power and keep Americans in the dark about what they are doing.
"I have long argued that Congress needs to know more, and the American people need to know more about what the CIA does and what the FBI does because we can't oversee them," Paul said. "We can't have oversight and reform if we don't know what they're doing, and they avoid oversight by classifying things."
Classified documents from the time President Joe Biden was a senator from 1973 to 2009 were recently found at his Wilmington, Delaware, home. But Paul said he rarely is handed classified documents, and if he views them, it would be in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF.
"I've never really had any documents," Paul said. "If I look at documents, I look at them in a secure reading room."
Paul said the only issue relating to classified documents from Biden's time as senator and vice president that were found in two locations is if they had anything connected with his son Hunter and Hunter's business dealings with Ukraine and China.
"We don't know whether or not any of the classified documents have anything to do with Hunter Biden's sort of scheme to take advantage of his father's name and make money in foreign countries," Paul said. "If the documents are related to Hunter Biden's business dealings, then we're talking another world of problems for them."
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