The intelligence community on Wednesday withheld access to information about President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal from bipartisan lawmakers, raising fears the intelligence community is resisting congressional oversight.
During a Senate intelligence hearing, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) questioned the heads of several intelligence agencies about why they continue to block congressional access to classified documents recovered from locations connected to Biden.
Both Warner and Rubio raised concerns that Congress has been prevented from conducting oversight on the intelligence community, which has refused to be forthcoming about the classified documents Biden stashed in multiple locations. Warner warned the stonewalling would negatively impact congressional approval of a warrantless surveillance program the Biden administration is desperate to reauthorize. The law is set to expire at the end of 2023.
“Its value cannot be overstated,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen admitted in February about the warrantless spy program. “Without 702, we will lose indispensable intelligence for our decision-makers and warfighters, as well as those of our allies. And we have no fallback authority that could come close to making up for that loss.”
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 28: U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division Matt Olsen arrives for a meeting with congressional leadership on February 28, 2023 in Washington, DC. Congressional leadership attended a closed briefing on the classified documents found in the possession of U.S. President Joe Bide, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Warner also insisted at the end of the hearing that the intelligence community’s stonewalling position did “not pass the smell test — the administration and the director’s current view about giving this committee access to the classified documents that we have every right to see in terms of our oversight role,” Warner said. “This trust relationship has to go two ways.”
On Wednesday, a report surfaced that nine boxes of secret documents had been retrieved by the National Archives (NARA) on November 9 from the Boston office of President Joe Biden’s lawyer, Patrick Moore. The agency has allegedly not yet reviewed them to ascertain if they contain mishandled classified information, the Archives told Republican senators.
It is unclear why, when, or for what purpose Moore initially shipped the documents from the Penn Biden Center to his Boston office.
It is also unclear why Biden’s attorneys were initially looking for his illegally stashed documents at the Biden Penn Center. The White House nor the Department of Justice has provided a reason or cause for the search. Moreover, at least three establishment media reports have recounted that Biden’s personal attorneys agreed to hide the scandal from the American people and likely did not plan to disclose the scandal until it was leaked on January 9.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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