WASHINGTON – President Biden said on Friday that he would prevent his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, from receiving intelligence briefings traditionally given to former presidents, saying that Trump was unreliable because of his “erratic behavior” even before 6 attack on the Capitol.
The move was the first time that a former president has been cut from briefings, which are provided partly as a courtesy and partly for times when an incumbent president asks for advice. Currently, briefings are offered regularly to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Biden, speaking with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, said that Trump’s behavior worried him “unrelated to the insurrection” that gave rise to Trump’s second impeachment.
“I just think there is no need for him to have intelligence instructions,” said Biden.
“What is the point of giving him an intelligence briefing?” Mr. Biden added. “What impact does it have, other than the fact that he can slip and say something?”
The White House said this week that it is considering whether the former president, whose Senate impeachment trial begins on Tuesday, should receive instructions. The president of the House Intelligence Committee, Deputy Adam B. Schiff, said last month, just before Biden’s inauguration, that Trump’s access to any confidential information should be cut.
“There is no circumstance that this president should receive another intelligence briefing, either now or in the future,” said Schiff, a California Democrat, who was the House’s manager at Trump’s first impeachment trial a year ago.
“In fact, there were, I think, several intelligence partners around the world who probably started to withhold information from us because they didn’t trust the president to safeguard that information and protect their sources and methods,” said Schiff. “And that makes us less secure. We saw this president politicize intelligence, and that is another risk for the country ”.
The question of how Trump handles intelligence has come up several times during his presidency. Shortly after firing FBI director James B. Comey in 2017, Trump told the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador about highly secret information about the Islamic State that came from Israel. The Israelis were outraged.
Later, in his presidency, Trump took a photograph with his phone of a classified satellite image showing an explosion on a missile launch pad in Iran. Some of the markings were erased first, but the revelation gave opponents information – that they they may have had, anyway – about the skills of American surveillance satellites.
There were other examples, and Mr. Trump’s advisers later said that because he refused to read intelligence reports – preferring an oral instruction – he did not see the “(S)” and “(U)” markings that indicated “secret” “and” not classified. “
But there was a deeper concern about how Trump could use intelligence, now that he has retired to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club. The former president spoke openly about the possibility of running again for the White House, perhaps under the banner of a third party. The fear was that he would use, or distort, intelligence to fit his political agenda, something he was often accused of in office.
Among those arguing to cut off Trump’s access was Susan M. Gordon, a CIA career officer who served as deputy director of national intelligence until 2019, when she stepped down after being passed over as director.
In an opinion piece in The Washington Post in January, Ms. Gordon, one of the most respected intelligence officers of her generation, wrote that the danger of providing intelligence to a president whose business could make him indebted to investors and creditors foreigners was just very good. Mrs. Gordon frequently informed Mr. Trump.
“His post-White House ‘security profile’, as professionals like to call him, is scary,” she wrote a week after the attack on the Capitol. “Any ex-president is, by definition, a target and presents some risks. But a former President Trump, even before last week’s events, can be exceptionally vulnerable to bad actors with bad intentions. ”