Administration can investigate itself and keep secret from congress what s in those documents for a risk assessment that we as policymakers have a constitutional right to make, is unacceptable, and it s also unacceptable, neil, just to limit this to the so-called gang of eight, those of us on the intelligence committees have oversight responsibility, every member of congress has our national security interests at stake, and it is important that we know, we know how to keep secrets, we do it every day. neil: there is a broad concern that the united states does not, and that china seems to know more of these secrets than we do. you seem not you, personally last in the pecking order, people who deserve to know. sometimes this is shared with the special counsel, the justice department, et cetera, and then it finally drips to you guys. does that take you off?
The white house want to do next? why was this sudden desire to shoot devices like this out of the sky and what does it mean about a policy heading forward? is this something that is going to be a regular occurrence? is this something that was just an anomaly that was born out of this spy balloon making its way into american airspace or does the administration have a new way of handling situations like this, and if they do, does congress need to play a role? does it need to appropriate additional funds to help with a program that would prevent something like this. is there just an oversight responsibility that congress has in terms of learning more as to exactly how the administration wants to handle it? these are all questions that they want to have answered and then finally, which is kind of a long-term question, chris, what does this mean about the long-term relationship with china? this obviously started with what everyone has confirmed is a chinese spy balloon. this was a huge dipl
Can t happen. one of the is not on the job yet. this is nothing but a stonewall to prevent members of the intelligence committee from doing our oversight responsibility which is distinct and separate from any criminal investigation. in fact, my colleague on the intelligence committee senator susan collins says this is the worst stonewall she has seen in 26 years in the congress so i really can t answer your questions about the seriousness of it until the administration allows us to conduct our legitimate oversight responsibilities and until they do, there is going to be consequences in the congress for them. brian: i know you are the legal guy not supposed to just jump to conclusions. if someone won t let you see the contents of the documents knowing their own party is going to have an aneurysm and blow up on them on the senate floor and it s worth that type of blowback, how bad are those documents? how incriminating and disturbing are they? well, i think many senators after this w
They re not getting good answers, mark warner says congress has a democrat says they have an oversight responsibility. the biden administration better help this, every
Little more detail in terms of what is the reason on the biden side of things s it because of the, you know, the criminal investigation? congress has an oversight ability and responsibility. and i think it s important to notice that. however, when it comes to things like what we re seeing look, we ve seen the republicans and congress at the moment make it clear they want the department of justice to stop investigating january 6th. they want them to stop investigating donald trump, for instance. the question is, what is the goal here? and quite honestly, on this oversight committee, there is not a lot of people i think that will keep any private information private. i can see the doj s concern on that. from the other hand, look, congress does have an oversight responsibility. congressman, we have hit the debt ceiling just this last week. again, lawmakers are sparring over what to do. ultimately, the debt ceiling is