Senate Panel Backtracks On Investigation Of Cruz Comments

Later Wednesday, Burr – who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee – issued a statement along with the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Ted Cruz made public classified information when he talked about government phone tracking during the CNN Republican debate Tuesday night.

Questions arose about whether Cruz uttered classified information during a face-off between the Texas senator and fellow GOP presidential hopeful Sen.

“I’m having my staff look at the transcripts of the debate right now”, Senator Richard Burr, told reporters on Wednesday morning. “Any time you cope with numbers… the query is “is that categorised or not” or is there an open supply reference to it”. So, let me just be very clear, there is nothing that we are allowed to do under this bill, that we could not do before.

The moment arose when Cruz and Rubio went head-to-head debating the merits of the USA Freedom Act and the changes it made to bulk phone metadata collection.

In his response, Rubio was cautious about discussing the program and suggested Cruz revealed classified information. Marco Rubio of Florida, Cruz said that investigators can examine “nearly 100%” of phone numbers in terror investigations under the law, while authorities could only do the same for “20% to 30%” before the law’s passage. The group wants Burr and the Intelligence Committee to punish Clinton over allegations that she sent classified information via email over a home computer server.

His staff is now reportedly checking whether the information Cruz mentioned has been previously disclosed. After he said the new program is more effective than the previous one, Rubio responded, “I don’t think national television in front of 50 million people is the place to discuss classified information”/Betsy Russell, Eye on Boise. And what has been said over and over again, what the intelligence community told Congress, was that the USA Freedom Act expanded their ability to target terrorists. “We’ve got to search all sorts of media outlets to see if anybody had reported that number independently”. He said as far as he knows the subject matter has not been briefed to lawmakers outside the committee.