The Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding the classified documents found in the possession of Joe Biden, Mike Pence, and Donald Trump.
But perhaps saying “briefed” is not quite correct. She went in and said something to them, but it sounds like everyone coming out of the meeting, including Democrats, weren’t happy with what they were being told. The Biden administration faiiled to come across with the documents that they wanted to see and evaluate — in their proper oversight capacity — how much national security may have been compromised.
According to the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the briefing by Haines was “very unsatisfying.”
“I think I speak for every member of the committee, the position DNI is taken on this topic is untenable,” Rubio said. He said they were stonewalling the Committee. “It cannot be that their answer is we can’t tell you what was discovered until the Special Counsel allows us to tell you; the information we’re asking for has no bearing whatsoever, or would interfere in no way with a criminal investigation.”
The Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner (D-VA) was also very frustrated. “I’m very disappointed with the lack of detail and a timeline on when we’re going to get a briefing,” he said. He repeated what Rubio had said, saying that the Biden team wasn’t coming across. “We’re left in limbo until somehow a special counsel designated it’s okay for us to be briefed. And that’s not going to stand,” Warner declared.
“All things will be on the table,” Warner said, to ensure that they got access to the Trump/Biden/Pence classified docs.
“There’s a sense of frustration that Justice is preventing the committee from hearing what they need to hear,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said. Wicker said he didn’t buy their explanation, “I do not. I absolutely do not. It has to be resolved.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said the Biden administration needed to “stop stonewalling.” Cotton said they needed to see the underlying evidence to perform their proper oversight responsibility. He said the various DOJ investigations should not stop the Biden administration from letting them see the documents. He said that special counsel investigations could take years and meanwhile, they needed to judge whether national security had been compromised.
Cotton said he would slow down “all nominees” to inflict “pain” on the administration over its “stonewalling.” “We should not be fast tracking nominees, whether they’re in the intelligence community, or Department of Justice or the Department of Agriculture until we have access to…docs,” Cotton declared.
As we saw earlier, even the National Archives is stonewalling the House Oversight Committee when it comes to the Biden documents, although they certainly were running their mouths off when it came to the Trump matter.
Congress needs to start bringing all its powers to bear to get the Biden team to come across from subpoenas to compelling testimony to doing anything else they can to make sure they comply. When both sides of the aisles are saying this is unacceptable, you know there’s a big problem here–and you know that it isn’t because of the Trump documents that they aren’t coming across. It’s because if they turn over Trump documents, they’re going to have to turn over the Biden documents and I’m guessing that’s going to be a big problem.