WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 U.S. officials have offered to brief congressional leaders on their investigation into the classified documents found at former President Donald Trump\u2019s Florida residence as well as President Joe Biden\u2019s Delaware home and former private office, people familiar with the matter said Sunday.
\nA briefing could come as soon as this week. But it may not meet demands from lawmakers who want to review the documents taken not just from Mar-a-Lago but also from the locations belonging to Biden and the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence.
\nSix months after federal agents first conducted an unprecedented search of a former president\u2019s home for classified documents, the White House faces bipartisan pressure to share what it found with lawmakers who say they are concerned about the potential damage to national security and intelligence sources. Separate special counsels are investigating the documents found in the possession of Trump and Biden.
\nOfficials have declined to answer most questions in public or private about what they found, citing the ongoing criminal investigations and a separate \u201crisk assessment\u201d of the possible damage to intelligence sources.
\nRep. Mike Turner, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on Sunday that the administration notified him it would brief on the documents this week.
\n\u201cThis administration needs to understand we do have national security urgent matters,\u201d said Turner, R-Ohio. He also called on the White House to brief him on the Chinese balloon shot down Saturday.
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is that the moment this balloon became public, I got a notice not from the administration that I\u2019m going to get a briefing on this balloon, but they have to rush to Congress now to talk to us about Donald Trump\u2019s documents,\u201d he said, adding that a discussion of Biden and Pence\u2019s records was expected to be included.
\nThree people familiar with the matter confirmed a congressional briefing was offered to the \u201cGang of Eight\u201d \u2014 the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and of both intelligence committees. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
\nAny briefing is not expected to include direct access to the documents that were seized, the people said.
\nSens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked for that access in a letter last week to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
\nThe director of national intelligence\u2019s office and Department of Justice both declined to comment Sunday.
\nThe Justice Department says roughly 300 documents with classified markings, including at the top-secret level, have been recovered from Mar-a-Lago after being taken there after Trump left the White House. Last August, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the property after developing evidence that led them to believe that Trump and his representatives had not returned all the classified files.
\nThe material taken at that time included roughly 13,000 government documents, including about 100 bearing classification markings. Some of the material was so sensitive that Justice Department prosecutors and FBI counterintelligence investigators required additional security clearances to review them.
\nA special counsel, Jack Smith, is investigating whether to bring charges against Trump or anyone else related to the documents. Prosecutors have revealed that they are investigating possible violations of multiple criminal statutes, including willful retention of national defense information and obstruction. A grand jury in Washington has been hearing evidence and federal prosecutors have interviewed multiple Trump associates. It is not clear how much longer that investigation will last.
\nTrump has claimed that the materials were declassified and that he had the power to do so just by thinking about it, though his lawyers have not repeated that claim. They tried to have an independent arbiter conduct an outside review of the documents, though a federal appeals court late last year ended that work and said Trump\u2019s team was not entitled to that assessment.
\nBiden\u2019s lawyers say they contacted authorities after first discovering \u201ca small number of documents with classified markings\u201d on Nov. 2, 2022, in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. The documents were found as Biden\u2019s attorneys were clearing out the offices.
\nA second batch of documents \u2014 again described by Biden\u2019s lawyers as a \u201csmall number\u201d \u2014 were found in a storage space in Biden\u2019s garage near Wilmington, Delaware, along with six pages located in Biden\u2019s personal library in his home.
\nFBI agents on Jan. 20 located six additional items that contained documents with classified markings and also took possession of some of Biden\u2019s handwritten notes, according to Biden lawyer Bob Bauer. The FBI subsequently searched Biden\u2019s vacation home in Delaware but found no classified documents, Bauer said afterward.<\/p>\n
Apnews<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aTrump, Biden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 U.S. officials have offered to brief congressional leaders on their investigation into the classified documents found at former President Donald Trump\u2019s Florida residence as well as President Joe Biden\u2019s Delaware home and former private office, people familiar with the matter said Sunday. A briefing could come as soon as this week. But it may not meet demands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1169,1558,1230],"class_list":["post-5338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-biden","tag-officials","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5340,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338\/revisions\/5340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}