The director of national intelligence told lawmakers that her office would lead a review concerning the sensitive documents retrieved from former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence.
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Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, said her office would work with the Justice Department to ensure that the assessment did not interfere with the department’s criminal investigation.
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials will conduct a review to assess the possible risks to national security from former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents after the F.B.I. retrieved boxes containing sensitive material from Mar-a-Lago, according to a letter to lawmakers.
In the letter, Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, informed the House Intelligence and Oversight Committees that her office would lead an intelligence community assessment of the “potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure” of documents Mr. Trump took with him to his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla.
In the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Haines said her office would work with the Justice Department to ensure that the assessment did not interfere with the department’s criminal investigation concerning the documents. The review will determine what intelligence sources or systems could be identified from the documents and be compromised if they fell into the wrong hands.
Ms. Haines’s letter, dated Friday, was reported earlier by Politico. It came after the leaders of the Intelligence and Oversight Committees asked her on Aug. 13 to conduct an “immediate review and damage assessment” in the wake of the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, during which federal agents recovered 11 sets of classified material.
News of the intelligence community assessment came a day after the Justice Department released a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. That document included the revelation that Mr. Trump had retained highly classified material after leaving office, including documents related to the use of “clandestine human sources” in intelligence gathering.
Representatives Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and the chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, issued an approving statement in response to Ms. Haines’s letter.
“The D.O.J. affidavit, partially unsealed yesterday, affirms our grave concern that among the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago were those that could endanger human sources,” Mr. Schiff and Ms. Maloney said in their statement.
Using the abbreviation for the intelligence community, they added, “It is critical that the I.C. move swiftly to assess and, if necessary, to mitigate the damage done — a process that should proceed in parallel with D.O.J.’s criminal investigation.”
Before the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, the National Archives and the Justice Department tried at length to retrieve sensitive documents from Mr. Trump. In January, officials from the archives retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago, and a review of their contents found a total of 184 documents with classification markings, including 25 labeled “top secret.”
Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.
Source: nytimes.com
