When classified documents were found at former President Donald Trump’s mansion in September, the chairmen of Congress’s Intelligence Committees wanted a “damage assessment” about how Trump hoarding those documents may have hindered national security. The assessment never happened. And according to two sources familiar with internal conversations, party politics is to blame.
For a variety of reasons, congressional leaders delayed what one source called a “hot potato” just long enough to turn it into a messy, partisan debacle. And in recent weeks, when improperly stored classified documents were found at the homes of President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence, what was supposed to be a secret and sober exercise in oversight quickly became a fountain of false equivalencies, according to former intelligence officials.
“Let’s do it individually, because there’s a difference,” said retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden. “Trump was lying for more than a year… but he didn’t go and talk to the archives. Biden immediately [did], and so did the vice president.”
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Hayden, who led the NSA and CIA for a decade, stressed that top legislators should have been quickly looped into any potential fallout from Trump’s decision to hoard some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
“It’s important to know the truth. Sooner or later, they’ve got to do that,” he told The Daily Beast.
In the weeks after FBI agents recovered more than 100 classified records at Trump’s oceanside Florida estate of Mar-a-Lago, top lawmakers asked the feds for more information. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines promised she would provide a briefing detailing any destructive fallout—which would include murdered spies, ruined surveillance technology, or stolen military blueprints.
But it never happened.
The two chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), have actively called for briefings to happen. And both cited others’ “scheduling conflicts” as the reason members of the so-called Gang of Eight haven’t been apprised of the situation. That exclusive circle encompasses the top Democratic and Republican leader in each chamber, plus each party’s leading member on each chamber’s Intelligence panel.
But what no one is saying out loud is that some legislators used their busy calendars as an excuse to delay the briefing, sources said. By pushing it off, they avoided any potentially damning judgment of Trump’s actions and the highly divisive discourse that would likely follow.
It’s unclear which specific lawmakers were eager to delay the briefing. But there may have been reasons for leaders of both parties to avoid it.
An alarming assessment might have sown political chaos for both parties just before the 2022 elections. Now that the election is over, it remains radioactive for Trump-loving Republicans, because it puts them in a difficult position. The briefing could justify the FBI’s decision to enter Mar-a-Lago uninvited in August, a move that MAGA acolytes continue to refer to as a “raid” that was part of a years-long “witch hunt” into the ex-president.
“A responsible ‘Gang of Eight,’ once briefed and informed, could temper some of the more extreme responses that might come from members on the Hill and temper inflammatory talk about a raid,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a former CIA chief of staff.
“Maybe some members think it’s in their best interest not to be informed so they don’t have to curb the excesses,” he added.
The key upshot of the delay in scheduling a briefing, however, is that the damage assessment of Trump’s documents seems destined to travel hand-in-hand to Capitol Hill with a similar assessment for Biden’s documents.
Warner told NBC News earlier this month that lawmakers “expect to be briefed on what happened both at Mar-a-Lago and at the Biden office as part of our constitutional oversight obligations.”
Now that the GOP has taken control of the House, the new Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee wasted no time in demanding a damage assessment briefing—on Biden.
On Jan. 10, Turner issued a public letter to the national intelligence director warning that “this discovery of classified information would put President Biden in potential violation of laws protecting national security.”
“Those entrusted with access to classified information have a duty and an obligation to protect it,” Turner wrote.
His letter made no mention of the Mar-a-Lago scandal.
DNI declined to comment over the weekend.
These kinds of damage assessments can be pivotal, because they help politicians brace for potentially catastrophic threats to national security in case sensitive records were seized by foreign spies. Law enforcement experts have been warning about the heightened risk in Trump’s case; documents marked “top secret” and “secret” were found in boxes and furniture at Mar-a-Lago—which doubles as the former president’s winter estate but also a beach club for spies and anyone seeking to curry favor with Trump.
“The primary purpose is to ask, has any U.S. national security secret been compromised? Has any source or method been compromised? Did something happen to that human source in ensuing years? Did we see a drop-off in collection from that particular area? If it’s U.S. weapons information... have we seen that weapons design compromised?” asked Pfeiffer, the former CIA chief of staff.
Five months ago, just after news broke of the FBI search of Trump’s Florida club, members of both parties seemed eager to flex their power to demand more information.
Outside the Gang of Eight, many Democrats were eager to learn what kind of documents Trump had been refusing to turn over—while some Republicans may have been hungry for any shred of evidence that the FBI had overreached.
Weeks after the search, the Gang of Eight formally asked for a briefing from law enforcement on the nature of the documents Trump had, Politico reported—though it was unclear if all eight members had signed onto the request.
Even at that early stage, according to Politico, congressional aides had “expressed frustration about the fact that Congress has learned little about the investigation into the former president.”
As the year wore on, lawmakers did not receive much more information. Some of that is due to Trump’s own legal delay tactics—in the form of an ill-conceived federal lawsuit curiously assigned to a federal judge he appointed himself. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to temporarily freeze the FBI investigation and her short-lived court appointment of a “special master” to review the Mar-a-Lago documents apparently slowed the process of scheduling a briefing for the Gang of Eight, adding to more frustration on Capitol Hill.
But in January, the revelation that classified documents were found at various Biden-connected properties significantly changed the dynamic around the briefings.
Freshly in the majority, House Republicans evinced little interest in pursuing more information on the Trump documents, even as they lathered into a frenzy about the Biden developments.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the new chair of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper he was more concerned with “how Trump was treated” by federal law enforcement. “At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents, to be honest with you,” Comer said.
But Comer has wasted little time launching the GOP inquiry into the Biden documents. He has already locked in a transcribed interview, scheduled for Tuesday, with the top lawyer for the National Archives and Records Administration, which has jurisdiction over post-presidential documents. The Oversight chairman has also sent formal requests for information to the White House and the U.S. Secret Service on Biden’s handling of documents.
For their part, the nation’s spy agencies insist on bipartisan interactions—and would not make sensitive presentations to members of a single political party, according to half a dozen people familiar with the practice. However, top intelligence officials are inclined to inform legislators about bubbling situations promptly.
“Congressional oversight is very important,” Pfeiffer said. “The intelligence community can begin to feel a little frustrated when they can’t participate in that oversight, because then fingers get pointed at them.”
