Guilty verdict will likely not affect plans for intel briefings for Trump
By Dan De Luce
The guilty verdict on Thursday in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial is unlikely to affect plans by U.S. intelligence agencies to brief him once he is formally named the Republican presidential nominee, a U.S. official told NBC News. While these intelligence briefings for presidential nominees are a tradition dating back to 1952, they are not legally required. Their purpose is to ensure a smooth transition of power and prepare the prospective commander in chief for office. Nominees do not need a security clearance for these briefings, and a felony conviction would not prevent them from proceeding.
As reported by NBC News in March, U.S. officials intend to provide Trump with intelligence briefings despite his facing 40 federal criminal charges in a separate case involving mishandling classified information after leaving office. Canceling these briefings could lead to accusations against President Joe Biden of politicizing access to intelligence, according to current and former U.S. officials.
In 1952, President Harry Truman, who established the Central Intelligence Agency, initiated the custom of intelligence briefings for presidential nominees, explaining to his CIA director, “There were so many things I did not know when I became president.” Larry Pfeiffer, a former CIA chief of staff and now director of the Hayden Center for Intelligence at George Mason University, explained that these briefings typically include information of lower classification levels and likely exclude details about intelligence sources and methods.
“The fact that Trump has now been convicted of fraud sadly provides further evidence that the former president holds the concept of trust in very low regard. Trust is fundamentally what makes our system of protecting secrets work,” Pfeiffer told NBC News. He added that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will likely consider this evidence but may still decide that maintaining the tradition of briefings serves the greater good.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for the candidate briefings, declined to comment.
During his presidency, Trump was accused of compromising secret information in a conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and by tweeting an image of an Iranian satellite launch. After leaving office, he was indicted on federal charges for allegedly retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Prosecutors allege that sensitive documents were found in various locations at Mar-a-Lago, including a bathroom, a ballroom, and his bedroom.
Trump, who has pleaded not guilty, faces 40 felony charges, including willful retention of national defense information, false statements, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document, and corruptly concealing a document. Trump and his lawyers argue that he had the right to possess the documents, should be immune from prosecution since he took the papers while he was president, and claim he is being unfairly targeted compared to other former officeholders.
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