Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) expressed doubt about whether Congress will receive an intelligence community briefing any time soon on damages arising from classified documents found at former President Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago resort.
The Virginia Democrat cited a judge’s approval of Trump’s motion for a special master review of documents, which directed investigators to stop using seized material for a criminal investigation, after which prosecutors said the intelligence community was forced to pause its assessment of national security risks.
“My understanding is there is some question because of the special master appointment by the judge in Florida, whether they can brief at this point,” he said Sunday on CBS News’s Face the Nation. “We need clarification on that from that judge as quickly as possible, because it is essential that the intelligence committee leadership at least gets a briefing of the damage assessment.”
He added that while the specific details of the confiscated materials are still unknown, any mishandled intelligence could put sources in jeopardy.
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“The vice chairman and I have asked for a briefing of the damages that could have arisen from mishandling of this information, and I believe it’s our congressional duty to have that oversight,” Warner said. “Remember, what’s at stake here is the fact that if some of these documents involve human intelligence, and that information got out, [people] will die. If there were penetration of signals intelligence, literally years of work could be destroyed.”
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master despite the Justice Department’s opposition, and the two sides have since turned in proposals for how to move forward, including nominees, access, and speed of the third-party review. The Justice Department has said it will appeal the order granting an independent review and asked the judge in Florida to issue an emergency order to allow investigators to continue using classified material due to national security concerns while the appeal plays out.
Warner stressed he’s not interested in gaining insight into an active investigation but rather wants to perform Congress’s oversight duties — in this case to assess whether there was damage done to the “intelligence collection and maintenance of secrets capacity.”
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“That is a damage assessment, that frankly, even the judge in Florida has said, can continue,” he said. “I may not agree with the decision of the judge in Florida, but I respect our Department of Justice. I respect the FBI. I think they are trying under extraordinarily difficult circumstances to get it right, and we owe them the benefit of the doubt.”
