NEW: DNI Dan Coats: 'I am confident that the Attorney General will work with the IC in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly-sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk.'
Saying he wants him to be"fair," President Donald Trump on Friday described why he has given Attorney General William Barr sweeping powers to declassify intelligence as part of his review into how the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election began and the resulting surveillance on the Trump campaign.
“It's not payback,” he said. “I don't care about payback. I think it's very important for our country to find out what happened.” "The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information," according to the statement.
"You know the thing that's interesting about this is that this was handled at a very senior level of these departments. It wasn't handled in the ordinary way that investigations or counterintelligence activities are conducted. It was sort of an ad hoc small group and most of these people are no longer with the FBI or the CIA or the other agencies involved," Barr said on Fox.
Giving Barr the power to declassify information is"really extraordinary." according to one former National Security Agency attorney.
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