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 Mr. Trump can not be trusted because of his “erratic behavior” even before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The move was the first time a former president has been cut out of the briefings, presented in part as a courtesy and in part for the moments when a sitting president seeks advice. Currently, the briefings are regularly presented to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Mr. Biden, who spoke to CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell, said Trump’s behavior worried him “unrelated to the uprising” that led to the second indictment of Mr. Trump.
“I just think he does not have to take the intelligence briefings,” he said. Biden said.
“What value does it give him to give an intelligence briefing?” Mr. Biden added. “What impact does he have at all, other than the fact that he might slip and say something?”
The White House said this week that it was looking into whether the former president, whose indictment begins in the Senate on Tuesday, should receive the briefings. The chairman of the House’s intelligence committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff, last month, just before Mr. Biden’s inauguration said Trump’s access to any classified information should be cut off.
“There are no circumstances in which this president should get an information briefing again, neither now nor in the future,” said Mr. Schiff, a year ago, the California Democrat who was the House Secretary for Trump’s first indictment, said.
“There were indeed, I think, a number of intelligence partners around the world who probably started withholding information from us because they did not trust that the president would protect that information, and would protect their resources and methods,” Schiff said. “And it makes us less safe. We’ve seen this president politicize intelligence, and that’s another risk for the country. ”
The question of how Mr. Trump’s handling of intelligence came up several times during his presidency. Shortly after he fired FBI Director James B. Comey in 2017, Mr. Trump the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador tell of a highly classified intelligence about the Islamic State that came from Israel. The Israelites were furious.
Later in his presidency, Mr. Trump took a photo with his phone of a classified satellite image showing an explosion at a missile loading road in Iran. Some of the marks were first blackened, but the revelation gave opponents information – which they may have had anyway – about the capabilities of American observation satellites.
There were other examples, and Trump’s aides later said he did not want to read the intelligence reports – preferably an oral briefing – that he did not see the signs “(S)” and “(U)” that were “secret” and “Has not indicated. unclassified. ”
But there was a deeper concern about how Mr. Trump could use intelligence now that he has retired to Mar-a-Lago, his club in Florida. The former president spoke openly about the possibility of running for the White House again, 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 is often accused of in office.
Susan M. Gordon, a career CIA officer who served until 2019 as deputy director of national intelligence, when she left after being transferred as director.
In an opinion piece in The Washington Post in January, Mrs. Gordon, one of the most respected intelligence officers of her generation, wrote that the danger of providing information to a president whose business dealings might make him appear to foreign investors and credit providers was just too great. Mrs. Gordon called Mr. Trump regularly informed.
“His ‘safety profile to the White House’, as professionals like to call it, is frightening,” she wrote the week after the attack on the Capitol. ‘Any former president is by definition a target and carries some risks. But a former President Trump, even before last week’s events, is extremely vulnerable to bad actors with bad intentions. ‘