'People will die!' Top Democrat says it's 'essential' the Senate Intelligence Committee be briefed on how much damaged Trump caused by taking documents to Mar-a-Lago 

• Senator Mark Warner said Sunday it's 'essential' that Senate Intel be briefed on the damage assessment of the materials seized in the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago 
• He claimed Donald Trump's improper handling of classified materials could be a matter of life or death 
• 'If some of these documents involved human intelligence, and that information got out, people will die,' the Virginia Democratic senator said

Senator Mark Warner insisted Sunday that it's important the Intelligence Committee is briefed on the damage assessment from the materials seized from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in the FBI raid last month.

Warner, who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the classified information held improperly and mishandled for nearly two years could be the matter of life and death in some cases.

He claimed it's 'essential' that his panel be briefed on the damage assessment.

Thousands of documents were taken from the former president's Florida home, inventory lists reveal – and many of what was taken includes some sort of classification label, including up to the highest-level of classified material.

Warner and Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Marco Rubio, a Republican, are requesting a briefing from the Justice Department and FBI to provide more details on potential breaches.

'I believe it is our congressional duty to have that oversight,' Warner told CBS Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan on Sunday morning.

'Remember what's at stake here is the fact that if some of these documents involved human intelligence, and that information got out, people will die,' he said. 'If there were penetration of our signals intelligence, literally years of work could be destroyed.'

Damages could have also arisen, Warner added, in terms of what different foreign entities and allies may have shared with the U.S. while Trump was president, which could put them in jeopardy from foreign threats if the information got out.

Warner called the Senate Intelligence Committee 'one of the last functioning bipartisan committees' in the whole Congress.

Despite the call for a briefing, he acknowledged that 'we still don't know what's in those documents.'

'It is essential that the Intelligence Committee leadership, at least, gets a briefing of the damage assessment,' Warner added.

A judge in Florida ruled this month in favor of Trump requesting that a special master be appointed to handle the case as whistleblowers continue to come forward and claim bias against the former president within the higher ranks of the Justice Department of FBI.

Trump insists that the FBI improperly took documents from his home during the raid on August 8, like his passport and medical history. He also lamented that the agents, of which there were about 30, 'rummaged' through former first lady Melania Trump's closet and his 16-year-old son Barron's room.

The raid culminated after a judge approved the probable cause search request approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

It followed a breakdown in a probe into Trump taking documents from the White House when he left office last year. Earlier in 2022, Trump turned over 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives.

The Presidential Records Act notes that presidential materials are the property of the people and not the officeholder – with that in mind, presidents must preserve and turn over the material to the National Archives once leaving office.

Trump took a slew of materials from his time in office, including classified or secret documents, photographs, gifts, books and thousands of magazines, newspapers and printed out articles.

Presidents can declassify information, but it is unclear if Trump did that before taking these documents from the White House.