Congressional Republicans are already exploring ways to get around the Justice Department as they investigate how the Biden administration has handled similar classified document inquiries involving the sitting president and his predecessor.
Senate Intelligence Committee members are threatening to cut intelligence agency funding. House Oversight Committee Republicans are pursuing separate lines of inquiry with the Secret Service and the National Archives.
DOJ REJECTS JORDAN INFO REQUESTS ON BIDEN CLASSIFIED DOCS BY CITING SPECIAL COUNSEL APPOINTMENT
And the House Judiciary Committee is seeking testimony from FBI whistleblowers to shed light on how the bureau handled the respective investigations of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden internally, a person familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) previously said his committee has worked with 19 FBI whistleblowers to get a sense of politicization within the bureau.
Those conversations led to House Judiciary Republicans releasing a report in November about problems that whistleblowers identified within the FBI, including that the law enforcement agency inflated numbers related to “violent extremism” to support a partisan narrative.
Some of the whistleblowers remain employed by the bureau, and some may have knowledge related to the Justice Department's decision to issue a subpoena to Trump and later raid his home while declining to take either step in the Biden inquiry.
The department told Jordan on Monday that it would not satisfy most of his requests until special counsel Robert Hur completes his investigation of the Biden case.
Justice Department officials have told all committees that the existence of special counsels in both the Trump and Biden investigations will effectively bar them from cooperating with the congressional inquiries.
The intelligence community has taken largely the same approach. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines frustrated members of the Senate Intelligence Committee last week when she declined to answer questions about the content of the classified material in question.
Senators on the panel want to know what kind of records surfaced in Trump’s home and Biden’s office and residence. They have also said they don’t plan to investigate how the documents got there in the first place.
That has led Senate lawmakers to question the DNI’s claim that she can’t share the material due to the law enforcement investigation.
“I don’t know how congressional oversight on the documents, actually knowing what they are, in any way impedes an investigation,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the Intelligence Committee’s top Republican, said in an interview that aired Sunday. “These are probably materials we already have access to. We just don’t know which ones they are.”
Rubio and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) suggested that cutting the DNI’s funding is on the table if intelligence agencies continue to block their inquiry.
With both the White House and the Justice Department largely stonewalling the House Oversight Committee, Chairman James Comer (R-KY) has sought information about who had access to Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, (where at least four batches of documents sat unsecured for, potentially, years) from the Secret Service.
The Secret Service has signaled a willingness to cooperate with a congressional investigation.
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But the National Archives, where both cases originated, has said it will give the Justice Department the ability to veto any disclosures it might make to Congress.
Like with the intelligence agencies, this approach will allow DOJ leaders to block the flow of information not just from their own agency but from the National Archives as well.