Rep. David Cicilline urged President Obama on Wednesday to bar Donald Trump from sensitive intelligence in light of his public invitation for Russia to provide the U.S. with private emails that Hillary Clinton deleted.
Wednesday afternoon, Trump said he hoped Russia could help find the emails, and said his guess is hackers have already directed those emails to Russia by now.
But Cicilline echoed other Democrats who said Trump’s remarks are essentially an invitation for Russia to hack the U.S. As a result, he said Trump shouldn’t have access to the intelligence that he will soon be entitled to as the official Republican nominee for president.
“[O]n July 27, 2016, Mr. Trump urged Russian intelligence services to conduct cyberespionage operations into the correspondence of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying, ‘Russia, if you’re listening, I hope that you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,'” Cicilline wrote.
“In light of those recent statements, I respectfully ask you to suspend Mr. Trump’s access to these briefings,” he wrote.
He said Trump’s comments “warrant a re-examination of his access to sensitive intelligence.”
“These remarks reflect more than just a lack of good judgment — it is an explicit call for intervention from an adversarial foreign power to undermine the American democratic process, and represents an action just short of outright treason,” he wrote.
BREAKING: Rep Cicilline requests @POTUS cut off @realDonaldTrump‘s access to classified intel. pic.twitter.com/nL7eep5rXh
— Cicilline Press Office (@RepCicilline) July 28, 2016
