“Nonsense”: House Intelligence Committee Member Skewers Biden’s Documents Excuse

Speaking on “Face the Nation” to CBS’ Margaret Brennan, House Intelligence Committee member Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah, sounded off on Biden’s claim that he didn’t know what was going on with the documents, saying that that was “nonsense.”

That began when Margaret Brennan, asking Stewart about the Biden documents and the potential national security risk in them, asked:

“You sit on the Intelligence Committee, which has asked for more information from the Director of National Intelligence in regard to the Biden documents. But when you were on CNN last week, you said you really doubt that there’s something that could endanger national security here. Do you think this is just an overreaction to the story?”

Stewart, replying, told her that he thinks the potential for whatever is in the documents to actually endanger American national security is limited, describing the likelihood of a real security risk in both the Biden documents and Trump documents as being “extraordinarily unlikely.” In his words:

No, I don’t. I mean, I do think it’s unlikely that, you know, when President Trump had this similar experience, some of the media and others claimed, oh, he has nuclear codes, nuclear secrets. I said at the time, I find that extraordinarily unlikely. And I think that the same thing would be true of this situation.

Brennan then tried to cut in on Stewart, saying “Well, there–”, likely intending to suggest that there are differences between the Trump documents and Biden documents that makes the Biden document situation worse.

Stewart, however, didn’t give her a chance to interject and throw him off or attack Trump. Instead, he kept rolling, explaining what it is about the Biden document situation that’s a problem and blasting the Biden “I didn’t know” response to outrage as being “nonsense” given how clearly classified documents are marked. In his words:

“Probably not that type of- that type of information. But if I could make this point very quickly about, you know, the likelihood of him being unaware of this, I mean, not only am I on the Intelligence Committee, I was an Air Force pilot, I flew the B-1, I’ve dealt with- with classified documents almost my entire life.

“And you have to know, every one of these documents, they have a cover sheet that’s that’s read. It says what the classification is and why it’s classified. Every single page has a classification marking on it. This isn’t the kind of thing that you just sit on your desk and you think, Oh, I forgot that they’re classified. It’s very clear that they’re classified.

“And for those who think that, well, the President didn’t realize that he had those in his possession. It just is nonsense. Of course, he knew that he had them. They’re so obvious.”

The only defense of Biden that might make his “I didn’t know” defense more realistic is that he seems senile, so maybe he personally had no idea…but his staff likely did, making Biden’s claims, as Stewart put it, “nonsense.”