President Joe Biden told CBS on Friday that there’s no need for Trump to receive intelligence briefings because of his “erratic behavior”.
“I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Biden said. “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?”
Some Democrats and even some former Trump administration officials have said Trump should not receive intel briefings now that he’s out of office.
Susan Gordon, who served as the principal 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 off Trump.
“His post-White House ‘security profile,’ as the professionals like to call it, is daunting,” Gordon wrote days after a pro-Trump mob laid siege to the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers sought to certify his defeat in last November’s election. “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.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, 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.”
