Top Senate Democrat Blasts Biden Admin Over Classified Doc Scandal: ‘Doesn’t Hold Water’

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) slammed the Biden administration over President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal.

Warner made the remarks during an interview on CBS News’s “Face The Nation” with host Margaret Brennan while discussing when the committee would obtain information from the Director of National Intelligence about what was in the classified information at Biden’s home and former office.

“Our job is not to figure out if somebody mishandled those, our job is to make sure there’s not an intelligence compromise,” Warner stated. “And while the Director of National Intelligence had been willing to brief us earlier, now that you’ve got the special counsel, the notion that we’re going to be left in limbo, and we can’t do our job, that just cannot stand.”

“And every member of the committee who spoke yesterday and I wanted the director to hear this, regardless of party said, we are united in we have to find a way to do our job,” He went on. “That means we need these documents, we need that assessment.”

Warner was later added. “The notion of ‘We’re not going to give the Oversight Committee the ability to do its job until the special prosecutor somehow says it’s OK,’ doesn’t- doesn’t hold water. That’s not going to stand with all the members of Congress.”

MARGARET BRENNAN: Let’s start on the news of the moment. The Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines gave you a briefing. Is there a timeline for when you will have access to the classified documents that President Biden and President Trump kept in their homes?

SEN. MARK WARNER: Margaret, unfortunately, no. This committee has a long, bipartisan history of performing its duties. This is our job: intelligence oversight. The Justice Department has had the Trump documents about six months, the Biden documents about three months, our job is not to figure out if somebody mishandled those, our job is to make sure there’s not an intelligence compromise.

And while the Director of National Intelligence had been willing to brief us earlier, now that you’ve got the special counsel, the notion that we’re going to be left in limbo, and we can’t do our job, that just cannot stand. Every member of the committee that spoke yesterday, and I asked the director, wanted to hear it. Regardless of party affiliation, we all agree that we must find a way to do what we’re supposed to. This means that we need these documents and we need this assessment.

MARGARET BRENNAN – But intelligence experts would argue that their hands are tied as this is an ongoing Justice Department investigation. What would you do to address your concerns while not compromising the integrity of this investigation?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Well, I don’t know how congressional oversight on the documents, actually knowing what they are, in any way impedes an investigation. These are materials that we probably already have access. 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, 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 on whether they’ve properly risk assessed it?

So we’re not interested in the timeline, the tick-tock, the who got what, who did that? Those are criminal justice matters, to the extent that that’s what it is. That’s not what we’re interested in. We deserve and have a right and a duty to review what the materials were so we can have a better understanding of not just, you know, what the agency is doing about it, but whether it’s sufficient.

MARGARET BRENAN: Does the director know the contents of the materials?

SEN. WATERNER: We got a bit vague on that because I believe you want intelligence professionals to be able to verify that some of it was being made. But I would even think that if the- President Trump and President Biden would probably want to have this known if they say there’s no there there. You know that there could still be violations in handling.

But we got to tell the American people and our colleagues, because we’re the only ones who have access to this information, that there’s not been an intelligence compromise. And again, this notion that when there was a special prosecutor appointed, they’re not exactly the same circumstances. Remember that this committee spent many years investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. There was also a special prosecutor.