The chairman of the House intelligence committee blasted the Justice Department on Sunday for being “somewhat disingenuous” and having “not been forthcoming” to Congress on the alleged mishandling of classified documents by President Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.
Rep. Mike Turner said the documents the DOJ has submitted to determine potential damage to national security paint an incomplete picture.
“The Department of Justice has not been forthcoming in this. And they’ve been somewhat disingenuous, and certainly both the House and the Senate are going to have to address this,” the Ohio Republican said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“One, the documents that were delivered to Congress are not complete. And secondly, they don’t identify whose documents they were, whether they came from the trove of Biden’s behind the Corvette, or whether they came from Mar-a-Lago,” he added.
Mr. Turner is part of the small group on Capitol Hill known as the “Gang of Eight” — the caucus leader and ranking intelligence committee member from each party in each chamber. Those four Republicans and four Democrats receive more classified information than rank-and-file members.
But Mr. Turner said they need to see the troves of documents so Congress can take necessary action to prevent further mishandling of sensitive information.
From what he’s seen so far, he said Sunday that no highly dangerous information like nuclear codes or other “extreme imminent threat” were present.
“We’ve seen the index of them. We’ve gotten some of the documents delivered to us. But the Department of Justice really needs to come clean,” Mr. Turner said.
“There are laws that need to be changed so that we can more protect our classified documents and those who handle them,” he said.
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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