A Republican senator suggested that the intelligence community pointed the finger at the Department of Justice on Wednesday when explaining why spy agencies are limited in sharing details about President Joe Biden’s classified documents saga.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) was briefed along with other senators behind closed doors by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Wednesday, and he told reporters in the hallway after the briefing that “there is a sense of frustration that [the] Justice [Department] is preventing the committee from hearing what they need to hear.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland selected former Trump appointee U.S. Attorney Robert Hur on Jan. 12 to serve as special counsel to investigate Biden’s potential mishandling of classified documents. Garland also named former Kosovo war crimes prosecutor Jack Smith to handle investigations centered on former President Donald Trump, including related to Mar-a-Lago, late last year.
Wicker signaled Wednesday that the senators were not getting information about the potential mishandling of classified records by Biden and Trump because of the ongoing special counsel investigations into the two men.
When asked if he believed that was an adequate explanation, Wicker told reporters, “I do not. I absolutely do not. It has to be resolved.”
GOP BIDEN CLASSIFIED DOCS INVESTIGATIONS SLOWED BY SPECIAL COUNSEL
The DOJ and Office of the Director of National Intelligence thus far haven’t weighed in publicly on the existence of any damage assessment on Biden’s classified documents saga despite both agencies repeatedly discussing the Mar-a-Lago risk review last year.
Biden’s personal attorneys said they first discovered classified documents in early November at the Penn Biden Center. Biden’s lawyers have since found more classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington home in December and January, and the DOJ found more when it conducted its own search Friday.
ODNI declined to comment this week on whether it was conducting an intelligence assessment on the classified documents found at the center and at Biden’s Wilmington home despite Haines confirming in late August that ODNI was conducting such an assessment related to the classified documents found in Trump’s possession following the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in early August.
DOJ had also repeatedly pointed to the “critically important” ODNI damage assessment of the Mar-a-Lago documents last year when fighting Trump in court. DOJ has made no such statements related to any ODNI risk assessment on the Biden classified documents scandal and did not respond to a request for comment this week.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a Jan. 10 letter to Haines requesting “an immediate review and damage assessment” related to Biden’s handling of classified documents but hadn’t gotten confirmation of the existence of one as of Tuesday.
The congressional intelligence committees are not the only ones whose inquiries have been slowed down by the Justice Department as the DOJ points to special counsel Hur.
The Republican-led Committee on Oversight and Accountability told the National Archives in early January 2023 that it was investigating whether there was “political bias” at the agency related to how it had handled the Biden versus Trump scandals, but the National Archives blew through the deadline for information this week set by Rep. James Comer (R-KY).
Archivist Debra Wall had defended her agency’s actions in a letter to Comer last week — and she repeatedly cited Hur and the Department of Justice as a reason for her delay in providing key details.
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The Biden White House, including White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and White House spokesman Ian Sams, has also used the special counsel appointment to deflect questions about what Biden knew and when he knew it, citing the investigation by Hur and the DOJ.
