US President Joe Biden has intimated that ex-President’s Donald Trump’s “erratic behaviour” should prevent him from receiving classified intelligence briefings, a courtesy that has historically been granted to outgoing presidents.
Asked in an interview what he feared if Mr Trump continued to receive the briefings, President Biden said he did not want to “speculate out loud” but made clear he did not want his predecessor to continue getting them.
“I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”
Questions had been raised during Trump’s presidency about his ability to keep sensitive US intelligence secret.
Mr Trump reportedly revealed classified information related to feared threats by the ISIL (ISIS) group to Russia’s foreign minister and US ambassador in a 2017 White House meeting.
US intelligence agencies were forced to repatriate a high-level spy from Moscow during the Russia investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Also, more recently, during the 2020 election campaign, Trump administration officials selectively declassified information to attack the president’s political opponents
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week that the issue of granting Trump intelligence briefings was “something that is under review.”
With the former President’s impeachment hearing coming up, President Biden, made it clear that his hesitance to allow Trump access to the briefing was due to his “erratic behaviour unrelated to the insurrection.”
Some Democratic lawmakers, and even some former Trump administration officials, have also questioned the wisdom of allowing Trump to continue to receive briefings.
Last month, Susan Gordon, who served as the Principal Deputy Director of national intelligence during the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019, urged President Biden to cut off Trump.
“His post-White House ‘security profile,’ as the professionals like to call it, is daunting. Any former President is by definition a target and presents some risks. But a former President Trump, even before the events of last week, might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent.”
Ms Gordon also raised concerns about Trump’s business entanglements. The real estate tycoon saw his business founder during his four years in Washington and is weighed down by significant debt, reportedly about $400 million. Mr Trump during the campaign called his debt load a “peanut” and said he did not owe any money to Russia.
“Trump has significant business entanglements that involve foreign entities. Many of these current business relationships are in parts of the world that are vulnerable to intelligence services from other nation-states.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, had also urged Biden to cut off briefings for Trump.
“There’s no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing,” Schiff said shortly before Trump ended his term last month.
“I don’t think he can be trusted with it now, and in the future.”
Whether to give a past president intelligence briefings is solely the current officeholder’s prerogative.
