Avril Haines, the US Director of National Intelligence, told members of Congress that her office will conduct a review of what FBI agents took from Mar-a-Lago as part of their investigation into whether the former president violated the law. these documents. Meanwhile, government lawyers have until Tuesday to give a fuller account to the courts of what they actually found in the investigation, as both sides prepare for another week of legal proceedings. In her letter, which was first reported by Politico and picked up by the Financial Times, Haines said: “The Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are working together to facilitate the review of classified material, including those discovered during the investigation.” She added that her office “will lead an Intelligence Community assessment of the potential risk to national security that would arise from the disclosure of the relevant documents.” The letter was welcomed by Democratic leaders in Congress. In a joint statement, Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Carolyn Maloney, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said: “It is critical that [intelligence community] move quickly to assess and, if necessary, mitigate the damage that has been caused.” The Justice Department on Friday released portions of the affidavit that supported the Aug. 8 investigation at Mar-a-Lago. The document gave little sense of what was contained in the files recovered during the raid, but shed light on the 15 boxes of material Trump returned to the administration in January. According to the filing, those boxes contained 184 classified documents, of which 25 were top secret. They included markings suggesting they contained information about human intelligence sources and intercepted communications. Democrats have said the affidavit shows how serious the allegations against the former president are, while some Republicans have also agreed. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating last year’s attack on the US Capitol, told NBC News on Sunday: “This is disgusting in my mind. And no president should act that way, obviously.” Government lawyers have until Tuesday to give fuller information to the courts about what they found in the raid this month, after a judge ruled Saturday that they needed to be more forthcoming about what they seized and who had examined it. The judge, Eileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, said in her ruling that the Justice Department should file a fuller proof of the documents that have been sealed so they are not publicly accessible. He added that he intended to accept the former president’s request to appoint an independent official to review the documents as well. But she will make her final decision after a full hearing on the matter on Thursday.
