In 1952, President Harry Truman began the practice of delivering intelligence briefings to presidential candidates ahead of the election. The purpose: to help with the transition from one president to another. Amid reports intelligence agencies will provide Trump with briefings despite his classified documents trial, Rep. Adam Schiff told “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker that “I have to hope, and knowing the intelligence community as I do, that they will dumb down the briefing for Donald Trump.”
“That is, they will give him no more information than absolutely necessary, nothing that will reveal sources or methods, because we can’t trust that he will do the right thing with the information,” Schiff added.
“He’s been so reckless. So yes, it does concern me. It is part of a long tradition, they will be wary of what they share with him — and they should,” the representative noted.
Schiff himself was previously chair of the House Intelligence Committee when the Democrats controlled the chamber.
Of the briefings, Schiff also said that it “is the practice” for nominees to receive them, “but we’ve never had a situation where one of the candidates for president has been so criminally negligent when it comes to handling — if not worse — when it comes to handling classified information.”
In June 2023, Trump was arrested and charged with 37 counts related to the mishandling of more than 100 classified documents containing secrets that pertained to national security. He pled not guilty to the Espionage Act charges.
Schiff also spoke with Welker about Rep. Katie Porter’s claims that the California Senate race was “rigged.” Schiff easily defeated fellow Democrats Porter and Rep. Barbara Lee in California’s open primary to fill Dianne Feinstein’s seat in the U.S. Senate. Despite the use of the term, Schiff praised Porter for running “a tough campaign” and noted he has plenty of “respect for my colleagues.”
However, “that term ‘rigged’ is a very loaded term in the year of Trump,” Schiff added. “It connotes fraud or ballot stuffing, false claims like those of Donald Trump. And I think what’s remarkable is Democrats very quickly rallied to say, ‘No, we don’t use that language. The election was legitimate.’”
“And this was a sharp contrast to how the Republican Party treats allegations of rigged elections, which is they’ve gone along with them,” Schiff said. “Indeed, they’re urging President Trump to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists if he ever got a chance. So a very different reaction among the parties to any kind of challenge to our democracy.”
Watch the interview with Rep. Adam Schiff in the video above.
