Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the leading members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, are pushing for their panel to gain access to the classified documents found at President Biden’s and former President Trump’s residences over the last year.
“Our job is not to figure out if somebody mishandled those [documents],” Warner told CBS News in an interview alongside Rubio, set to air on Sunday. “But our job is to make sure there’s not an intelligence compromise.”
In what has become a widespread issue in recent months, classified documents have now been discovered at the homes of Biden, Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.
A “small number of documents bearing classified markings” were found at Pence’s Indiana home last week, after the former vice president brought in outside counsel to search his personal records. The decision came in the wake of revelations that classified documents had been discovered at Biden’s former Washington, D.C., office and Wilmington, Del., home.
The National Archives reportedly asked former presidents and vice presidents to conduct a similar search for any misplaced presidential records, including classified materials, in a letter on Thursday, according to CNN.
Warner said Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, was previously willing to brief the Senate Intelligence Committee on the classified material discoveries.
However, with the Justice Department’s appointment of special counsels to lead investigations into both Biden’s and Trump’s handling of classified documents, Warner said the committee has been “left in limbo” and has no timeline on when they will get access to the documents.
“We can’t do our job,” he said. “That just cannot stand.”
Rubio emphasized that congressional oversight on the documents should not impede the investigations.
“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,” Rubio said.
“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?” he added.