cnn s natasha bertrand joins me now. the director of national intelligence is taking this very seriously. she is and rightfully so, right, because of all the sensitive information we believe was in these documents and we re learning that the director of national intelligence, avril haines has written a letter to the oversight and house intelligence committees telling them that she has begun a classification review and a review of the risk to national security that these kind of loose documents could pose. now, clearly this is kind of an escalation here. we weren t sure whether the intelligence community would be able to see the documents that had been retrieved from mar-a-lago because they are part of an active criminal investigation, and the fbi typically holds very closely any evidence in those probes. but obviously the risk here, the potential risk to national security contained in these documents is just too great for the intel community to not be made aware of what s p
further, and if you look at the history of authoritarian parties, you know, who s going out of the party? it s people tlike liz cheney wh stand up witfor the law. who is coming in, lawless people, who talk about violence and even members of oath keepers are making a career in the republican party. so the only way to stop this drift towards violence is to hold trump accountable as the person who incited violence on january 6th. and if trump is ultimately prosecuted for the classified documents investigation, i mean, this has been on my mind. that would not address his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. it s been compared to nabbing al capone on taxes. do you think that would leave the door open for more election schemes from losing candidates, or do you think it would be better off for the country to see perhaps concurrent investigations, concurrent charges, perhaps a september for the set for the classified
again, i don t know, and you know, the investigation is, you know, will determine who had access hopefully to those k documents, but that can lead to the exposure of sources and officers that can lead to, you know, their deaths, their impri imprisonment, but also to a weakened ability to collect very necessary intelligence for americans security. and what it does also is this kind of news and this kind of development, what donald trump did also erodes people s confidence in our ability to keep really important sensitive information secret and to protect their lives and so for those officers who are serving out there now, it makes it much more difficult for them to do their jobs. for them to continue to recruit others to join the effort to be a part of our efforts to collect information and keep americans
cnn s natasha bertrand joins me now. the director of national intelligence is taking this very seriously. she is and rightfully so, right, because of all the sensitive information we believe was in these documents and we re learning that the director of national intelligence, avril haines has written a letter to the oversight and house intelligence committees telling them that she has begun a classification review and a review of the risk to national security that these kind of loose documents could pose. now, clearly this is kind of an escalation here. we weren t sure whether the intelligence community would be able to see the documents that had been retrieved from mar-a-lago because they are part of an active criminal investigation, and the fbi typically holds very closely any evidence in those probes. but obviously the risk here, the potential risk to national security contained in these documents is just too great for the intel community to not be made aware of what s possibly in
live abroad most of the time, working a cover job, and at the same time engaging with people in foreign countries who have access to sensitive information that is useful for keeping americans safe. so it could be, for example, a senior military officer in iran or in russia or elsewhere who s providing information about planned attacks or planned efforts to undermine u.s. security or our interests internationally. and so they take incredible risks when those individuals work with cia officers in order to keep the u.s. government informed of these issues. incredible risks, i can t overstate it. they re putting their lives on the line for a greater cause. and the cia officers who meet with them are also putting their lives on the line in many cases, and so what we see here with the potential exposure of these documents to who knows who, and