In a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Thursday, Sen. John Cornyn told Chairman Dick Durbin that attempts from the Biden administration to block congressional oversight of the classified documents scandal is “completely unacceptable,” and will shut down the senate’s nominations process until Congress gets more access.
“This is very serious,” Cornyn, R-Texas, who also serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in the meeting. “It is completely unacceptable to me, I believe on a bipartisan basis, for the Biden administration to block Congress from performing its constitutional duty here…there are issues much larger than individual criminal investigation that I think needs to be addressed,” Cornyn said to Durbin, D-Ill.
“We are the policymakers,” the senator pressed. “And it’s just, it’s not hard to imagine some scenario in which classified information is taken out of a secure facility, is made available to our adversaries, that it would threaten the national security of the United States, in ways that we would need to respond to as policymakers.”
Cornyn also confirmed in a briefing Wednesday with Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the Intelligence Committee learned that Haines “has no information about the classified information” that was found at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, President Biden’s garage and former Vice President Mike Pence’s office.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
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“Congress has a constitutional responsibility to provide oversight into the intelligence gathering by the intelligence community, and all 17 agencies that fit under that umbrella,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn also told Durbin that he plans to use “every tool available to us to gain access to this information,” noting that might include holding up judicial nominees and leveraging the power of the “purse strings” in the senate.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., left, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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“This is something we cannot do if the Biden Justice Department says they’re not going to share with us what intelligence products President Biden stored in his garage or stored in his think tank in Philadelphia,” he added.
“This is not designed to prejudice, President Biden or President Trump or Vice President Pence,” Cornyn said.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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“We need to know what our adversaries know. And the reason why taking classified information outside of a secure facility is so egregious, is because it does make available to our adversaries potentially information that we prefer to keep secret in the national security interest. And so, to me…this looms much larger than an ordinary investigation by a U.S. attorney or by the Department of Justice,” Cornyn stated.