Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff said on Sunday that President Donald Trump “can’t be trusted” with intelligence briefings.
During a Sunday morning interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” anchor Margaret Brennan brought up the fact that former principal deputy director of National Intelligence Susan Gordon had written that the president should be “denied access” to intelligence briefings following the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“Would you urge the Biden administration to do that?” Brennan asked.
WATCH:
“Absolutely,” Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, responded. “There’s no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing, not now, not in the future. I don’t think he can be trusted with it now, and in the future, he certainly can’t be trusted.”
Schiff suggested that intelligence partners “started withholding information” from the United States “because they didn’t trust the president would safeguard that information, protect their sources and methods, and that makes us less safe.”
Gordon wrote a Friday op-ed for The Washington Post suggesting that Trump should not receive intelligence briefing once he leaves office.
“My recommendation, as a 30-plus-year veteran of the intelligence community, is not to provide him any briefings after Jan. 20,” she wrote. “With this simple act — which is solely the new president’s prerogative — Joe Biden can mitigate one aspect of the potential national security risk posed by Donald Trump, private citizen.” (RELATED: Ben Sasse Blasts QAnon In Op-Ed: ‘Nourished By Treachery, Poor Political Judgement, And Cowardice’)
“Any former president is by definition a target and presents some risks,” Gordon continued. “But a former president Trump, even before the events of last week, might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent.”