The Democratic and Republican Senate Intelligence Committee leaders sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines over the weekend, requesting the rationale behind the FBI's raid on former US President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence.
Sens. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a ranking senator, signed the letter seeking all information on the justification for the extraordinary operation, per Fox News.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a motion to unseal parts of the search warrant. Garland said he had "personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant."
Sen. Rubio said in a statement: "In his remarks, Attorney General Garland claimed there was a substantial public interest in the execution of an unprecedented search warrant on President Trump. As such, the Intelligence Committee has asked the Department of Justice to share with us, on a classified basis, the specific intelligence documents seized from Mar-a-Lago."
According to a committee spokesperson who informed Axios, the Senate Intelligence Committee is in charge of monitoring counterintelligence issues, including the management and misuse of secret information, which appears to be the focus of the Mar-a-Lago probe.
For the Interest of The American Public
A spokesperson for the panel stated that it "asked that DOJ and ODNI provide the committee with the classified files that were obtained in the search of Mar-a-Lago, and an "assessment of the potential national security risks as a result of their mishandling."
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement that the public "deserves a full accounting of the extraordinary action taken by the FBI last week,."
She added that the Senate must obtain critical information related to the FBI's search of former President Trump's residence.
"It's imperative that the Committee receive all classified documents found during the search as well as the FBI affidavit, which would describe in detail any justification for the search," Sen. Collins said.
Republicans and Democrats have separately called for more details about the search and the materials it turned up after it resulted in the seizure of 11 sets of sensitive documents from Trump's home.
Donald Trump Says He Will Help America
After the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home last week, ex-US President Donald Trump declared that he "will do whatever" he can "to help the country," telling Fox News Digital that the American people "are not going to stand for another scam."
As a result of the outcry over the FBI's unprecedented raid on his private residence last week, Trump said he had his representatives contact the Justice Department to offer support per Fox News.
In his first interview with since the raid, Trump disputed the records' classification, claiming they have been declassified.
"The country is in a very dangerous position. There is tremendous anger like I've never seen before, over all of the scams, and this new one-years of scams and witch hunts, and now this," he said. "If there is anything we can do to help, I, and my people would certainly be willing to do that."
According to Trump, the deployment of law enforcement to enter the home of a former US president has never occurred at a time like this, and noted that the degree of outrage in the nation is unprecedented.
