Charlotte, NC — House Intelligence Committee Chair, Adam Schiff, claimed yesterday that President Trump should immediately and permanently lose access to routine intelligence briefings during an interview
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, claimed Sunday that President Donald Trump should immediately and permanently lose access to routine intelligence briefings.
“There’s no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing — not now, not in the future,” Schiff said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I don’t think he can be trusted with it now and, in the future, he certainly can’t be trusted. Indeed, there were, I think, any number of intelligence partners of ours around the world who probably started withholding information from us because they didn’t trust the president would safeguard that information and protect their sources and methods.”
“And that makes us less safe,” Schiff continued. “We’ve seen this president politicize intelligence, and that’s another risk to the country.”
WATCH:
"There's no circumstance in which [Trump] 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 pic.twitter.com/hBF0bQS5PU
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 17, 2021
The Congressman from California’s 28th district were provided due to an op-ed published in The Washington Post. The author, Susan Gordon, was previously the number two person in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She argued that Trump should lose all security clearance after his presidency.
“My recommendation, as a 30-plus-year veteran of the intelligence community, is not to provide him any briefings after Jan. 20. 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,” Gordon wrote.
“For four years, as president, he has received — or had opportunity to receive — every single piece of information and analysis that the intelligence community produced, regardless of compartment or classification,” Gordon continued. “It is hard to overstate the value of what he has read and heard.”
“His post-White House ‘security profile,’ as the professionals like to call it, is daunting,” Gordon said. “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. He leaves, unlike his predecessors who embraced the muted responsibilities of being a ‘former,’ with a stated agenda to stay engaged in politics and policy. No departing president in the modern era has hinted at or planned on becoming a political actor immediately after leaving office.”
“I do not make this recommendation casually,” Gordon said. “It is based on my deep understanding of threats to national security, on decades protecting our people and interests overseas, and my experience deploying technical means to counter our adversaries.”
Claiming she has personally briefed Trump, Gordon maintained that her op-ed was not a personal grievance. “As an intelligence professional, I have gone out of my way not to judge his policy or personal actions publicly. This is an intelligence assessment born of my years of experience,” she claimed.
Schiff faced intense scrutiny during the first Trump impeachment proceedings. In fact, Schiff did most of the heavy lifting for the House managers, but relied on arguments and tropes that don’t withstand scrutiny during the trial before the Senate.
National Review reported that the Democratic case for impeachment and removal was heavily encrusted with clichés, widely accepted by the media, meant to give their indictment additional weight.
For example, Schiff falsely claimed that President Trump “believes that under Article II, he could do anything he wants.” This line used by many Democrats was a favorite during impeachment. However, it wrenched the president’s statement out of context when he was discussing having the inherent Article II power to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. Whatever you might have thought about the wisdom of such a move, Trump was correct about his power.
Schiff also stated, “He personally asked a foreign government to investigate his opponent.”
This was the conventional way that Democrats referred to Trump’s request of Ukranian President Zelensky, although in concrete form it became a push to get them to commit to probe Burisma, the shady Ukrainian energy company that had Hunter Biden on its board. An investigation of Burisma is not the same thing as an investigation of Joe Biden. This assumed the Bidens were at the center of a corrupt scheme that involved Burisma (and there was zero indication that they were), the investigation would have been a nothing burger in its impact on U.S. politics. Trump would have touted the investigation, but it is doubtful that this would have had any more impact than his already full-throated denunciations of Biden corruption.
Ultimately, Schiff failed to make Trump’s Ukraine scheme a piece of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election To exaggerate its national-security and electoral consequence, and to portray removing the president in the first impeachment proceedings was the only remedy to see Trump removed from office.
Clearly, January 20 will see Joe Biden inaugurated and not President Trump. While Trump will be heading home to Mar-a-Lago, Schiff still remains as the chair for the House Intelligence Committee!
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