US officials offer Congress briefing on Trump, Biden papers

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WASHINGTON (AP) US officials have offered to brief congressional leaders on their investigation into classified documents found at former President Donald Trumps Florida residence as well as President Joe Bidens Delaware home and former private office , people familiar with the matter said Sunday.

A briefing could come as soon as this week. But that may not meet demands from lawmakers who want to review documents taken not only from Mar-a-Lago but also from locations owned by Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Indiana.

Six months after federal agents first conducted an unprecedented search of former presidents’ homes for classified documents, the White House is facing bipartisan pressure to share what it found with lawmakers who say they they are concerned about potential harm to national security and intelligence resources. Separate special counsels are investigating documents found in the possession of Trump and Biden.

Officials declined to answer most questions publicly or privately about what they found, citing an ongoing criminal investigation and a separate risk assessment of possible damage to intelligence sources.

Rep. Mike Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that the administration notified him it would provide a briefing on the documents this week.

This administration needs to understand that we have pressing national security issues, said Turner, R-Ohio. He also called on the White House to inform him about the Chinese balloon that was shot down on Saturday.

The funny thing is that as soon as this balloon became public, I got a notice not from the administration that I was going to get a briefing on this balloon, but they had to rush to Congress today to talk to us about Donald’s documents Trump, he said, added that a discussion of the records of the Bidens and Pences is expected to be included.

Three people familiar with the matter confirmed a congressional briefing offered to the Gang of Eight by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and both intelligence committees. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Any briefing is not expected to include direct access to the seized documents, the people said.

Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sought that access in a letter last week to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Lavigne. Haines.

The director of the national intelligence office and the Department of Justice both declined to comment Sunday.

The Justice Department said about 300 documents with classified markings, including those at the top-secret level, were recovered from Mar-a-Lago after being brought there after Trump left the White House. Last August, FBI agents executed a search warrant on the property after developing evidence that led them to believe that Trump and his deputies had not returned all of the classified files.

The material seized at the time included approximately 13,000 government documents, including approximately 100 bearing classification marks. Some of the material is so sensitive that Justice Department prosecutors and FBI counterintelligence investigators need additional security clearances to review it.

A special counsel, Jack Smith, is investigating whether to bring charges against Trump or anyone related to the documents. Prosecutors announced they were investigating possible violations of multiple criminal laws, including willfully withholding information and obstructing national defense. A grand jury in Washington heard evidence and federal prosecutors interviewed several Trump associates. It’s unclear how long that investigation will take.

Trump has claimed that the materials have been declassified and that he has the power to do so just by thinking about it, though his lawyers have not repeated that claim. They tried to have an independent arbitrator conduct an outside review of the documents, though a federal appeals court last year ended that effort and said the Trumps’ team was not entitled to that review.

Lawyers for the Bidens said they contacted authorities after first discovering a small number of documents with classified markings on Nov. 2, 2022, in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. The documents were found while Biden’s lawyers were cleaning out the offices.

A second batch of documents that Bidens lawyers re-described as a small number were found in a storage space in Bidens garage near Wilmington, Delaware, along with six pages located in Bidens personal library at his home.

FBI agents on Jan. 20 found six additional items containing documents with classified markings and also took some of Biden’s handwritten notes, according to Biden’s attorney, Bob Bauer. The FBI subsequently searched the Bidens’ vacation home in Delaware but found no classified documents, Bauer said afterward.

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AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

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