US intelligence chief tells Congress she’s conducting damage assessment of documents taken from Mar-a-Lago
By Jeremy Herb and Annie Grayer, CNN
(CNN) - Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has sent a letter to the House Intelligence and House Oversight committee chairs, saying the intelligence community is conducting a damage assessment of the documents taken from former President Donald Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago, according to a letter obtained by CNN.
"The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are working together to facilitate a classification review of relevant materials, including those recovered during the search," Haines wrote in her letter to House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff and House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney.
Several members of Congress have called for an intelligence damage assessment of the documents.
Politico was first to report on the letter.
Maloney and Schiff said in a joint statement that they were "pleased" that Haines has launched the intelligence damage assessment of classified documents found at Trump's home in Florida.
The two chairs, who had called for the assessment after the FBI searched Trump's home earlier this month, also said that the assessment must move "swiftly."
On Friday, the Justice Department released a redacted version of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit, a document investigators used to convince a judge to authorize the Mar-a-Lago search.
The DOJ sought the warrant after the National Archives engaged in a protracted monthslong effort to retrieve documents taken from Trump's White House to Mar-a-Lago. After the Archives organized the return of 15 boxes of presidential materials from Mar-a-Lago in January, it referred the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.
In May, FBI agents reviewed the 15 boxes provided to the National Archives, and the search warrant affidavit details the amount of classified material that was found.
According to the affidavit, a "preliminary review" of the 15 boxes revealed that 184 documents contained classified markings, "including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET."
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