Regardless of the outcome of his impeachment trial, President Donald Trump should be immediately removed from intelligence instructions, said the Democratic president of the House Intelligence Committee.
“There is no circumstance in which this president should receive another intelligence briefing,” said Representative Adam Schiff on Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “I don’t think he can be trusted with that now and in the future.”
Some intelligence partners “probably” began to withhold information from the United States because they feared that their sources and methods would not be protected, Schiff said.
His comments echoed those of Sue Gordon, the former chief deputy director of national intelligence, who wrote an article in the Washington Post last week arguing that Trump should be excluded from intelligence.
Ron Klain, the new White House chief of staff, said on CNN on Sunday that Biden will await a recommendation from his advisers on the matter.
With impeachment articles still to be sent to the Senate, Dick Durbin of Illinois said his fellow Democrats should “follow their own conscience” about whether to support Trump’s conviction on charges of inciting an insurrection.
The second Senate Democrat said he did not tell his party members how to vote at the next trial. In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Durbin said he agrees with the position of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell that the vote is a “matter of conscience”.
It is unclear whether at least 17 Republicans would vote with Democrats to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to plead Trump guilty. McConnell said he is undecided. Most Republicans in the House voted against impeachment.
A conviction would allow a simple majority vote to prohibit Trump from running for office again, although some lawyers say it could be done outside the impeachment process.
“This was a traumatic event for many members of Congress,” Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment, told NBC’s “Meet the Press”.
Mace said that while it is “complicated” to try to ban Trump from taking federal office again without a conviction, she is encouraged that this may be possible. “We need to find a way to hold the president accountable,” she said.