The eight US House and Senate leaders who are required to be briefed on covert military and intelligence matters have asked the Department of Justice to provide them with access to the cache of classified documents that were seized from former president Donald Trump’s Florida home.
According to Politico, the “Gang of Eight” — the House of Representatives’ Speaker and Minority Leader, the Senate majority and minority leaders, and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees — have inquired about gaining access to the boxes of documents which FBI agents recovered from Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach, Florida mansion turned private club where Mr Trump maintains his primary residence and post-presidential office.
The 8 August search of the ex-president’s home came after months of negotiations between Mr Trump’s representatives and the Department of Justice, which was seeking the return of the documents because they are government property and should have been transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration when Mr Trump’s term ended in January 2021.
Spokespersons for the House Intelligence Committee and ODNI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A receipt for seized property provided to Mr Trump’s attorneys and filed with the Florida federal court that authorised the search showed agents as having removed 11 boxes, including documents marked as containing Sensitive Compartmented Information — a level of classification above Top Secret that is often used for intelligence sources and methods or nuclear secrets.
Two of the lawmakers who are included in the “Gang of Eight,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner and Ranking Member Marco Rubio, have also asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to assess potential risks to national security stemming from Mr Trump’s decision to keep the highly classified documents past the expiration of his term.
At a court hearing last week, the head of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence and export control section, Jay Bratt, told the federal magistrate judge who is weighing whether to unseal the affidavit used to obtain the warrant that the investigation into the documents is in “early stages”.
While the executive branch is required to brief the “Gang of Eight” about covert military actions and high-level intelligence matters, it is unlikely that the Justice Department would heed a request for information on what is still an ongoing criminal investigation.
