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US officials have offered to brief congressional leaders on their investigation into classified documents found at Donald Trump’s Florida residence, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
A briefing could come as soon as this week but may not meet demands from lawmakers who want to review documents taken not just from Mar-a-Lago but also from the Delaware home and former Washington office of Joe Biden and the Indiana home of Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence.
Six months after agents at Mar-a-Lago conducted an unprecedented search of a former president’s home, the Biden White House faces bipartisan pressure to share what it found. Separate special counsels are investigating documents found in the possession of Trump and Biden.
Officials have declined to answer most questions about what they found at Mar-a-Lago, citing the ongoing criminal investigation and a separate “risk assessment” of possible damage to intelligence sources.
Mike Turner, who chairs the House intelligence committee, told NBC’s Meet the Press the administration told him it would brief this week.
“This administration needs to understand we do have national security urgent matters,” the Ohio Republican said. He also called on the White House to brief him on the Chinese balloon shot down off the Carolinas on Saturday.
He said: “What’s interesting is that the moment this balloon became public, I got a notice not from the administration that I’m going to get a briefing on this balloon, but they have to rush to Congress now to talk to us about Donald Trump’s documents.”
Three people familiar with the matter confirmed a briefing was offered to the “gang of eight” – the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and both intelligence committees. The people spoke on condition of anonymity. Any briefing is not expected to include direct access to documents, the people said.
Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate intelligence committee, asked for that access in a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, and the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines.
It was unclear if the administration will discuss the Biden and Pence records. Turner told NBC records linked to Biden and Pence would be included but two sources said the briefing was expected to focus on Trump.
The director of national intelligence and Department of Justice declined to comment.
The justice department says around 300 documents with classified markings, including at the top-secret level, were recovered from Mar-a-Lago last August. FBI agents executed a search warrant after evidence led them to believe Trump and his representatives had not returned all classified files.
Material taken included around 13,000 government documents, about 100 bearing classification markings. Some material was so sensitive justice department prosecutors and FBI investigators required additional security clearance.
A special counsel, Jack Smith, is investigating whether to bring charges against Trump or anyone else. Prosecutors have said they are investigating possible violations of criminal statutes including willful retention of national defense information and obstruction. A grand jury in Washington has been hearing evidence and prosecutors have interviewed Trump associates.
Trump has claimed the materials were declassified and that he had the power to do so just by thinking – a claim his lawyers have not repeated. They tried to have an independent arbiter conduct a review of the documents. A federal appeals court said Trump’s team was not entitled to that assessment.
English (US)