President Trump is endangering the country by refusing to allow his apparent successor, Joe Biden, the full intelligence briefings to which incoming presidents have become accustomed.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it will not consult with the Biden transition team until the General Services Administration “ascertains” that Biden has won the election. In particular, Biden is not receiving the “presidential daily briefing” that provides intelligence on national security threats. Trump could choose to allow such briefings to be shared, but he has not done so.
At this stage of the transition process, more than two months from Inauguration Day, even Biden himself said the need “is not critical” yet. “It would be useful, but it’s not necessary.”
Still, the longer Trump waits to bring Biden and his team into the loop, the greater the chances that key information or considerations might fall through the cracks. For example, the delay in providing the daily briefings to George W. Bush’s team during the election dispute in 2000 “hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees,” according to the official report of the 9/11 Commission.
In contrast, Bush insisted that his team work diligently with incoming President Barack Obama’s team in 2008-09, in a process jointly overseen by national security adviser Stephen Hadley and White House homeland security adviser Ken Wainstein. I reached out to Wainstein for his insights.
“It is critical for the president-elect to start getting up to speed on the threat picture that he is going to face on the day he takes office,” Wainstein said. “You want the new president and his top team to be internalizing the most current threat information, so they can be thinking about options, hopefully discussing those threats and potential responses with their outgoing counterparts … The sooner they can start that process, the better.”
Wainstein cited what he described as semi-credible threats that al Shabab, an Islamist group most active in Somalia, planned a terrorist attack during Obama’s 2009 inauguration. He said that because the Bush and Obama teams had begun working together so soon and so cooperatively, they were able to work seamlessly at the same table in the days leading up to the inauguration to monitor and plan protection against the perceived threat.
“It was critical that we had a relationship already,” he said, “and that all the relevant actors in the different agencies had an understanding of how we operated.”
On the flip side, there seems to be no imaginable harm to allowing Biden and security-cleared aides access to the briefing already, even if, by some long-shot happenstance, Trump prevails in his election challenges. Biden received those briefings already, what Wainstein called, “The most sensitive information that the U.S. government has,” for eight years as vice president. Why should he not again be brought up to speed as soon as possible, for the good of the country he probably will be leading in two months?
“This isn’t about politics; this is about national security,” tweeted Mike Rogers, the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “Our adversaries aren’t waiting for the transition to take place. @JoeBiden should receive the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) starting today.”
Rogers is right. There’s everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by assuming for national security purposes that Biden will be president in January. This shouldn’t be about Trump’s belief that he won the election; it should be about what is best for the country no matter who won.
