We don’t see a lot of agreement across the aisle between Democrats and Republicans nowadays.
But we saw it back at the end of January when the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner (D-VA) and the ranking member Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said that the Biden administration needed to comply with the requests for information about the classified documents found at homes/office of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Indeed, it was a universal opinion of the Committee that the White House needed to comply because of their oversight responsibility and the potential danger to national security that the documents could pose.
Now Mark Warner is losing patience with the Biden administration and he made that very clear on CBS’ “Face the Nation” when he was asked about the issue by anchor Margaret Brennan. “You’ve been very frustrated that the administration wasn’t sharing more information,” she said. “You’ve been briefed. Any more clarity on this? Any further information?”
Warner said that they needed more information on the documents and they weren’t getting it from the Biden team and again he blasted the Biden administration for not providing them the answers that they needed, saying it “didn’t pass the smell test.”
“We need more information about these documents,” Warner said. “And more importantly, we need to make sure that what the intel community has done to mitigate the harm. And we’re still in conversations with the Justice Department. But the administration’s position does not, does not pass the smell test. We’ve got a job not to go into the legal ramifications, but to make sure that the intelligence community has done what’s right.”
Warner then threatened to hit the Biden team where they lived, right in the pocketbook. He said that they could withhold money from the three-letter intel agencies if the Biden team continues on this reckless path. But he made it clear that they weren’t going to let the Biden team get away with buffaloing them on the documents.
“We have some additional ways we can ratchet up the pressure on the IC. Sen. Rubio and I, frankly, this is completely bipartisan. All the Democrats and all the Republicans on the committee feel the same. We also are going to try to press the Justice Department harder to make sure that we do can do our job,” he told CNN.
“We’ve got some additional tools,” Warner said. “We can restrict some of the spending. We’re in active conversations with the Justice Department. But we’ve got to get those documents.”
They’ve been told the Biden team can’t let them see the documents because of the ongoing separate special counsel investigations. But the Senate Intelligence Committee isn’t buying it. They must determine if there’s any danger or harm that’s been done to national security. But if the Biden team wouldn’t turn them over that has to make one think that what they would see would either be potentially very positive for Trump and/or very negative for Joe Biden. Remember Joe Biden had classified documents going back decades as well as ones from his time as vice president. And perhaps since they already indicated that some pertained to Ukraine, it might be related to things that his family was involved in. If that’s the case, a scandal that was already bad is going to be so much bigger.
If they have to pull money from the intelligence agencies, that’s going to make those agencies unhappy with Biden, if what he’s doing here is trying to cover himself.