US President Joe Biden said on Friday that Donald Trump should not be allowed to receive confidential intelligence briefings, a courtesy that has historically been accorded to outgoing presidents.
Asked in an interview with CBS News what he feared if Trump continued to receive the briefings, Biden said he did not want to “speculate out loud” but clarified that he did not want Trump to continue to get them. .
“I just don’t think it’s necessary for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Biden said. “What’s the value of giving him an intelligence briefing?” What impact does he have at all, other than the fact that he might slip up and say something? ”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week that the issue of granting briefings on Trump’s intelligence was “something that is under review.”
Some Democratic lawmakers, and even some former Trump administration officials, have questioned the wisdom of allowing Trump to continue to inform.
Susan Gordon, who was the senior deputy director of national intelligence during the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019, in a Washington Post op-ed last month, urged Biden to cut Trump.
“His ‘safety profile’ after the White House, as professionals like to call it, is intimidating,” Gordon wrote days after a pro-Trump mob besieged the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers sought to certify his defeat in the elections last November. “Any former president is by definition a target and presents risks. But a former President Trump, even before the events of last week, could be exceptionally vulnerable to bad, malicious actors. ”
Giving a former president intelligence briefings is solely the prerogative of the current manager. Biden has voiced his opposition to Trump’s access to briefings as the former Republican president’s second impeachment trial is set to begin next week.
Gordon has also expressed concerns about Trump’s trade entanglements. The real estate mogul had his business founded during his four years in Washington and is weighed down with significant debt, around $ 400 million. During the campaign, Trump called his debt “peanut” and said he did not owe Russia money.
“Trump has significant trade entanglements involving foreign entities,” Gordon wrote. “Many of these current trade relationships are in areas of the world vulnerable to intelligence services from other nation states. ”
Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also urged Biden to halt briefings for Trump.
“There is no circumstance under which this president should get another intelligence briefing,” Schiff said shortly before Trump finished his term last month. “I don’t think we can trust him now or in the future.”
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