(Bloomberg) -- The Senate confirmation hearing for President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the National Archives was a mostly perfunctory event Wednesday despite the agency’s lengthy public battle to retrieve classified documents from former President Donald Trump. 

Senate Republicans who had hinted at a potentially rocky hearing for Colleen Shogan largely took a pass on grilling the nominee about the agency’s involvement preceding the August FBI search of Trump’s Florida estate that turned up boxes of classified documents, including ones with the US government’s highest top-secret rating.

Only three of seven Republicans on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee attended the hearing. Just one -- James Lankford of Oklahoma -- asked about the search, extracting a promise from Shogan to be “as transparent as possible” if debriefed on the circumstances of the Mar-a-Lago search.

Shogan, a former deputy director at the Library of Congress who writes whodunit murder mysteries, was tapped by Biden to take over the government agency best known for housing the Declaration of Independence. But the FBI search, which followed an 18-month effort by the Archives to retrieve presidential records taken when Trump left the White House, had raised the stakes over the confirmation.

The Archives contacted the Justice Department after the agency first found classified material in 15 boxes of documents it recovered from Mar-a-Lago in January. 

Lankford and another Republican on the panel, Rick Scott of Florida, have requested the FBI, Justice Department and the National Archives brief the committee, citing “significant questions” about the basis for the search.

Scott wasn’t at Wednesday’s hearing, but an aide said last month that he “absolutely will demand answers” about the search during Shogan’s confirmation process. 

Shogan, 46, is the first woman to be nominated US archivist. She is currently senior executive at the White House Historical Association. At the hearing, she promised to modernize the agency and reduce a backlog of requests from veterans who need to prove eligibility for benefits.

Two Republicans on the panel -- Rob Portman of Ohio and Josh Hawley of Arkansas -- questioned Shogan about a 2007 article in which she examined the ability of three Republican presidents -- Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush -- to communicate in “anti-intellectual” ways that appeal more to everyday Americans.

“Are you saying that Republicans are stupid and Democrats are intellectual?” Hawley asked at one point.

Shogan defended her article, saying that “it’s a piece on rhetoric and it’s a look at how these presidents have been successful in their arguments.”

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