When asked in an interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell if he thought Trump should receive an intelligence briefing if he requested one, Biden said, “I think not.”
“I’d rather not speculate out loud,” Biden said when asked what he fears could happen if Trump continued to receive the briefings. “I just think that there is no need for him to have the — the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”
Former presidents traditionally have been allowed to request and receive the same intelligence briefings that their successors have.
Former Trump Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon wrote in a Washington Post op-ed following the insurrection at the US Capitol last month that Trump “might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent” once he’s out of office.
Biden declined to say if he’d vote to convict Trump in next week’s impeachment trial if he were a senator.
“Look, I ran like hell to defeat him because I thought he was unfit to be president,” Biden said. “I’ve watched what everybody else watched, what happened when that — that crew invaded the United States Congress. But I’m not in the Senate now. I’ll let the Senate make that decision.”
In remarks following the January insurrection, Biden told reporters, “I’ve been saying for now, well, over a year, (Trump’s) not fit to serve. He’s one of the most incompetent presidents in the history of the United States of America.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
