DNI Defends Herself Over Stonewalling Allegations Around Biden Classified Docs

DNational Intelligence irector Avril Haines She defended herself after bipartisan outrage from members of the committee about her insistence on details about Trump/Biden. Sagas of classified documents

The Senate committee was critical of Haines’ refusal to share information or allow access to classified documents in the hands of the former President. Donald Trump President Joe Biden Follow these steps to “unacceptable” Briefing by DNI Wednesday Sen. Tom Cotton, R-AR), went one step further. Promising to impose “pain” The Biden administration will remain in place until the intelligence agency complies with congressional oversight demands.

WRAY SAYS CLASSIFIED DOC RULES ARE “THERE FOR A REASON”

Haines was present at the Wednesday briefing. referred to the investigations by the special counsel on Trump and Biden as a reason why she wasn’t providing more details, but she sidestepped this controversy the next day.

The DNI stated during Her speech Thursday, April 13, 2009 at the LBJ Presidential Library “absolutely does concern me” there are views that the intelligence community has been politicized, but she pointed to the intelligence community’s relationship with the Senate and House Intelligence committees as a bright spot — not mentioning the uproar that happened the day prior.

(Joe Raedle/AP)

“One thing that is true today that gives me great hope and something that I’m grateful for is, frankly, our Senate Select Intelligence Committee, our House Intelligence Committee, is quite functional,” Haines said Thursday. “We’ve had the chair and ranking come over and do workforce interviews with me. I talk to senators on both sides of the aisle on a regular basis, and same on the House. And we try to do briefings to them on a bipartisan basis, so we send everything to both sides. We try to do everything in a way that promotes confidence in the system and that allows for that.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee stated that Haines had given the senators a gift. “very unsatisfying hearing” Wednesday. “The bottom line is this: They won’t tell us what they have until the special counsel allows them to tell us. That’s an unacceptable position,” Rubio said.

“Until the administration stops stonewalling Congress, there will be pain as a consequence,” Cotton said. “There’s a simple solution to this. This is the time for the administration to stop obstructing Congress and give us these documents.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who was the chairman of this committee, also criticised the process. “not a tenable position” Haines took the picture. “What I think the director heard is — she didn’t just hear it from Sen. Rubio and I. Literally every member of the committee, without exception, said this won’t stand,” Warner said.

Warner said, “Every member of the committee, regardless of Democrat or Republican, unanimous in that this position that we are left in, until somehow a special counsel designates that it’s OK for us to get briefed, is not going to stand.”

Merrick Garland, Attorney-General, selects former Trump appointee Robert Hur, U.S. attorney, has been appointed as special counsel by Robert Hur on January 12. to investigate Biden’s possible mishandling of classified documents. Garland was also appointed ex-prosecutor for war crimes in Kosovo Jack Smith will handle all investigations that are centered around Jack Smith Trump and Mar-a-Lago late last year.

Haines stated Thursday that she tries to stress the importance of this statement. “what we’re doing is for the nation and not for politics.”

“And a piece of it, from my perspective, is … trying to expose as much as we can about what we do and what we don’t do and being as transparent about that as possible so that again, we can engender trust with the American people about how we do our business because I think there are a lot of misconceptions about the intelligence community that we’re constantly trying to pierce,” Haines said.

The DNI was added: “The perception of the intelligence community as being politicized makes it harder for us to do our job, right? … If the public doesn’t trust us and believes that we are biased politically or otherwise frankly in a way that is illegitimate, then people won’t pay attention to the warnings that we have — it makes us less effective from a national security perspective.”

The DOJ Office of the Director of National Intelligence So 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.

Thursday’s Haines speech Sponsored Public Interest Declassification Board that encourages intelligence community members to declassify intelligence more.

Haines acknowledged that overclassification was a problem in her Thursday speech.

“This is an urgent challenge to solve because first, overclassification undermines critical democratic objectives such as increasing transparency to promote an informed citizenry and greater accountability,” Haines said. “And second, overclassification undermines the basic trust that the public has in its government. And third, overclassification negatively impacts national security because it increases the challenges associated with sharing information that should not be classified or at least not classified at the level the information is classified at.”

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Haines referred to investigations regarding overclassification, and the fact “there are virtually no incentives in our bureaucracy to declassify or to refrain from classifying a document, but there are plenty of incentives to classify.”

Biden’s personal attorneys They first found classified documents in November, they said. The Penn Biden Center. Biden’s lawyers have since found more classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington home in December and January, and the DOJ It did its own search last week and found even more.