Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee will soon be briefed on the classified documents disputes involving President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The briefings, reportedly slated for later this month, will include intelligence committee leaders from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party and the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, D-Va., intel members aren't particularly interested in the criminal aspects of the cases involving Trump and Biden. The greater concern is whether any of the sensitive government documents in question would have put national security at risk.
"Our job here is intelligence oversight," Warner recently said. "The Justice Department has had the Trump documents about six months, the Biden documents about three months. Our job's not to figure out if somebody mishandled those. But our job is to make sure there's not an intelligence compromise."
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the intel committee's top Republican, has been critical of the DOJ throughout the process of retrieving classified materials from the presidents, past and present — particularly the Trump raid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
"I don't know how congressional oversight on the documents, actually knowing what they are, in any way impedes an investigation. These are probably materials we already have access to, we just don't know which ones they are," Rubio said in January.
"And it's not about being nosy, you know? Here's the bottom line: If, in fact, those documents were 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.
"How can we judge whether their mitigation standards are appropriate if we don't have material to compare it against, and we can't even make an assessment of whether they've properly risk assessed it?"
Senate lawmakers have been frustrated by the lack of transparency from federal investigators with the presidential cases. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., warned that changes will soon be in order if the obstructions continue.
"Whether it's blocking nominees or withholding budgetary funds, Congress will impose pain on the administration until they provide these documents," said Cotton.
Earlier this month, Warner and Rubio jointly called for "immediate compliance" from Attorney General Merrick Garland and Office of National Intelligence Director Avril Haines with requests for access to the classified materials that Trump and Biden allegedly possessed.
For each case, the senators also demanded a damage assessment — an analysis of the risk severity to national security, if improperly handled classified documents ended up in the hands of a foreign adversary.
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