Global Courant 2023-04-11 18:19:44
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has begun sharing with a bipartisan group of lawmakers known as the Gang of Eight secret documents found in possession from former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence, according to five people familiar with the case.
Top lawmakers, including Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had spent months asking the Justice Department for access to the documents — or at least an assessment of what they contained — so that Congress could review the potential measure damage to national security.
That process has recently begun, the people said, urging anonymity to discuss private interactions between the Justice Department and Congress. Committee leaders have had continuous access to it, one of the people said.
Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether Trump mishandled some 300 documents with secret markings found at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Florida estate, and whether he or his representatives have tried to obstruct that investigation. Another special counsel, Robert Hur, is also investigating the unauthorized retention of documents from Biden’s time as vice president that were located in his Delaware home and his pre-presidential think tank office. Biden has said he didn’t know the documents were there.
Lawyers for Pence have also said that a seemingly small number of papers were inadvertently boxed and shipped to his Indiana home at the end of the Trump administration.
Punchbowl News first reported on the development.
The Biden administration held a secret briefing on the documents earlier this year for members of Congress, but senators accused the executive of obstruction and insisted that for reasons of national security they should see for themselves what material the men had in their possession.
The Justice Department has said it wants to cooperate with the legislator’s demands.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.