WASHINGTON — In an interview on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, discussed the recently declassified Susan Rice email and his committee’s continuing government oversight efforts.
Video of the interview can be found here and excerpts are below.
“The first thought when I read that declassified email was why in the world was that ever classified? My next thought really went to the point you were making here, we did not witness what America has become so famous for: a peaceful, cooperative, well-wishing transition of power. Instead, we saw corruption of that transition. A transition that was really designed to sabotage and really upend the new administration.”
“There are so many odd things here, but I’m for full transparency. We way overclassify material, and what I found out in this job is we oftentimes classify to prevent embarrassment for individuals or prevent embarrassment to an agency. That’s not why we should be classifying. We should only classify to protect national security.”
“What I’m doing is I’m trying to get the American people the truth, and as this Susan Rice email shows, we have way overclassified things. There’s information the American people should’ve learned about three years ago. … We need to restore the integrity and credibility to these agencies, and this is not the way to do it by keeping this stuff covered up for over three years. It’s time to expose this. It’s time for transparency.”
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