“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”.
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Trump on Wednesday expressed outrage that she is receiving briefings through “people with great knowledge of the inner workings of our country and our security”.
Can Donald Trump – or any presidential nominee – lose access to briefings on national security? .
Earnest said the briefings are necessary to ensure a “smooth transition” to the next president, whoever it may be, and that the intelligence community could mitigate concerns about security.
The briefings could be held at any time after Clinton accepts the nomination Thursday night but are mostly likely to begin as soon as next week once arrangements about timing and a secure government location are made.
They began in 1952 by President Harry Truman who felt completely unprepared when he entered office in the middle of a war and unaware that the USA was building an atomic bomb.
“I think it’s an issue that …”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the administration is confident that USA intelligence officials can give “relevant and sufficient” briefings to both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton “while also protecting sensitive national security information”.
“If you’re forced to brief this guy, don’t tell him anything”.
“I think we have a better sense of information that ― files that they searched, avenues that they were exploiting”, Podesta said. “Fake it, pretend you’re doing a briefing, but you can’t give the guy any information”.
Mr. Earnest said the long-running tradition of providing the intelligence briefings to the nominees is important for the continuity of government.
He has said that career intelligence officers would conduct the briefings, and that neither he nor any other political appointee would attend the meetings.
Could Clinton receive a different briefing than Trump?
Questions, too, have been raised about Clinton’s capacity to receive classified information, given an FBI investigation that found she mishandled classified e-mails that she sent to and from a home-based e-mail server off the State Department network. If so, an answer is provided to both nominees at the same time to preserve parity.
“That certainly seems appropriate”, Mr.
Truman started intelligence briefings for presidential candidates in 1945, after he didn’t learn about the Manhattan Project until 12 days after he took office.
Intelligence officials say re-election briefings to presidential nominees tend to be chiefly analysis of current events and leaders, and do not include highly-classified details of spying sources and methods.
The vice presidential nominees are also briefed.
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“CIA briefers … heard Edwards tell his staff as he approached the briefing room at the hotel, ‘I know I have to do this, but I will get it over with quick and we can go for pizza.,'” according to John Helgerson’s book, “Getting to Know the President”, a history of intelligence briefings of presidential candidates.
