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- Senate Intelligence Committee members said they don't have a timeline as to when they'll obtain Biden's and Trump's classified documents.
- Classified documents were found at both Trump and Biden's private residences over the past several months.
- Sen. Marco Rubio told CBS it is "absurd" that the press had more info on the vague contents of the documents.
Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee said it was "absurd" that the media appears to have more information on the nature of the classified documents found at the residences of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump than the panel.
"Let me tell you how absurd this is, there isn't a day that goes by that there isn't some media report about what was found where, what some sort of characterization of the material in the press," Rubio told CBS' Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan on Sunday. "I just saw one this morning again. So somehow, the only people who are not allowed to know what was in there are congressional oversight committees. "
Rubio was joined in the interview with Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee.
—CBS News (@CBSNews) January 26, 2023
Warner told Brennan that the committee hasn't been given a timeline for when they'd be able to get more clarity on the contents of the documents found at Trump and Biden's residences.
"The Justice Department has had the Trump documents about six months, the Biden documents about three months, our job is not to figure out if somebody mishandled those, our job is to make sure there's not an intelligence compromise," Warner said.
Rubio pushed back on any assertions that getting a hold of the documents could impede the Justice Department's investigation, and said the committee probably already has access to the documents, but they "just don't know which ones they are. And it's not about being nosy."
In August of 2022, the FBI raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate and seized 11 sets of classified information, including some that were marked top secret. In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump's handling of classified documents.
Around the same time, an initial batch of classified documents was found at a private office for Biden from the time he was vice president. In the coming months, several more batches of classified information were found at Biden's home in Delaware. Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden earlier this month.
Rubio told CBS it's difficult for the committee to assess the risk mitigation standards for confidential information if they don't know what the material is.
"So we're not interested in the timeline, the tick-tock, the who got what, who did that? Those are criminal justice matters, to the extent that that's what it is. That's not what we're interested in," Rubio said. "We deserve and have a right and a duty to review what the materials were so we can have a better understanding of not just, you know, what the agency is doing about it, but whether it's sufficient."