The
Justice Department
made it official — the two recent special counsel appointments are among their top justifications for stonewalling congressional investigations into the
classified documents
sagas surrounding former
President Donald Trump
and
President Joe Biden
.
The
White House
, the National Archives, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines have all
pointed to the appointment of special counsels
in the Trump and Biden sagas as
reasons for missing deadlines or deflecting questions
, and the DOJ has now confirmed the special counsel justification for delays in info sharing.
WRAY SAYS CLASSIFIED DOCS RULES ARE ‘THERE FOR A REASON’
Carlos Felipe Uriarte, the assistant attorney general for DOJ’s office of legislative affairs, sent a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) and its Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL), citing
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s
late 2022 appointment of
special counsel Jack Smith
and Jan. 12 selection of special counsel
Robert Hur
to investigate the Mar-a-Lago classified records saga and the Biden mishandling scandal as a reason why DOJ was limiting the intelligence community’s sharing of information on these matters.
Biden’s personal attorneys
allegedly first discovered classified documents in Biden’s possession
on Nov. 2 at the Penn Biden Center. Biden’s lawyers have since found more classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home in December and in January, and
the DOJ found even more when it conducted its own search
.
Uriarte told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he was responding to an Aug. 14 letter that requested information on “the potential risk to national security posed by documents recovered by the search” of Trump’s Florida resort home — a letter which DOJ said also sought “non-public information that is central to an ongoing criminal investigation.” The assistant attorney general added he was also responding to a letter asking for “similar information” on the classified documents found in Biden’s possession.
“The Department recognizes the Committee’s important oversight interest over intelligence matters. We also appreciate the Committee’s interest in receiving information in a manner that is consistent with the Department’s obligation to protect ongoing investigations,” the DOJ official told the senators. “As you know, we worked in good faith to schedule a briefing in September 2022. Since that time, there have been significant developments, including the appointment of two separate Special Counsels to handle the respective matters. We are working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to support the provision of information that will satisfy the Committee’s responsibilities without harming the ongoing Special Counsel investigations.”
Uriarte said prosecutors working on the Trump and Biden sagas “are actively working to enable sharing information.”
Warner and Rubio rejected DOJ’s special counsel justification on Sunday.
“Our job here is intelligence oversight. The Justice Department has had the Trump documents about six months, the Biden documents about three months. Our job is not to figure out if somebody mishandled those, our job is to make sure there’s not an intelligence compromise,” the Virginia Democrat
said
on CBS News’s Face the Nation. “And while the Director of National Intelligence had been willing to brief us earlier, now that you’ve got the special counsel, the notion that we’re going to be left in limbo, and we can’t do our job, that just cannot stand.”
Rubio, who appeared alongside his colleague on the show, added: “I don’t know how congressional oversight on the documents, actually knowing what they are, in any way impedes an investigation.”
“Let me tell you how absurd this is, there isn’t a day that goes by that there isn’t some media report about what was found where, what some sort of characterization of the material in the press,” Rubio said. “So somehow, the only people who are not allowed to know what was in there are congressional oversight committees. But apparently, the media leaks out of the DOJ are unimpeded in terms of characterizing the nature of some of the materials that were found.”
The DOJ and the ODNI thus far
haven’t weighed in publicly on the existence of any damage assessment
on Biden’s classified documents saga despite both agencies repeatedly discussing the Mar-a-Lago risk review last year.
The new DOJ letter was also sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) and ranking member Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
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“The Committee’s interest in overseeing the nation’s intelligence activities must be carefully balanced to protect the conduct and integrity of law enforcement investigations,” Uriarte insisted to the senators on Saturday. “The Department shares your commitment to protecting classified information and to safeguarding our national security.”
The Biden administration has also cited the existence of special counsel investigations as a reason to
slow-walk information sharing
with House Republican investigators as well
.
