Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle will try to force the Department of Justice to allow them to review classified documents that President Joe Biden and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, retained after they left office, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner said Sunday.
"They have no ability to prevent us," the Ohio Republican told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz, adding that Congress has "absolute" subpoena power to demand the documents.
"We were told that we were going to have these documents available to us to review," he said. "I think it only makes everybody concerned about what are they hiding and why are they trying to keep it from Congress?"
The Department of Justice has not allowed a congressional review of the documents because special counsel investigations are taking place concerning the documents, and Turner predicts that there will be "bipartisan, bicameral support" to force Attorney General Merrick Garland to make the items that have been seized available.
In addition to documents being found on Biden and Trump properties, former Vice President Mike Pence's attorney also reported finding some classified materials that had been retained after he left office. Those documents are undergoing review by the FBI and the DOJ's National Security Division.
Meanwhile, Turner said he wants to know how the documents got to the leaders' homes and what happened to them between when they were moved and when they were found.
He pointed out that some of the documents that were found at Biden's Wilmington, Delaware home dated to his time in the Senate, at least 14 years ago, but declined to address the Pence case other to say that the former vice president had not been aware of the materials.
But in all the instances, "the concern is that this information would be given to someone else, and would be accessed by someone else," said Turner. "That's why it's classified. That's why it's a grave concern as to the manner in which this is handled. These classified documents contain information that we don't want anyone else to see, that we don't want anyone else to know, because they put at risk our country."
Meanwhile, Turner said he's concerned that there may be too many documents that end up being classified, and that he thinks some things are "overclassified."
"Unfortunately, Congress doesn't have the ability to declassify [materials]," said Turner. "There are things that I think need to be out in the public discourse."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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