Thursday’s guilty verdict in former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial is unlikely to affect U.S. intelligence agencies’ plans to provide him with briefings after he is formally named Republican presidential candidate, a U.S. official told NBC News.
The intelligence briefings for presidential candidates are not required by law, but are a practice dating back to 1952 and intended to ensure a smooth transition of power and prepare a future commander in chief for office. The presidential candidates do not need security clearance to receive the briefings, and a felony conviction against a candidate would not prevent the briefings from happening.
As NBC News reported in March, U.S. officials planned to give Trump intelligence briefings even as he faces 40 federal criminal charges in a separate case alleging he mishandled classified information after leaving office.
Canceling the briefings for Trump could expose President Joe Biden to accusations that he is trying to politicize access to intelligence, current and former US officials say.
In the summer of 1952, then-President Harry Truman, who created the Central Intelligence Agency while in office, floated the idea of having intelligence officers brief every presidential candidate, telling his CIA director, “There were so many things I did. I don’t know when I became president.”
Larry Pfeiffer, a former chief of staff at the CIA and now director of the Hayden Center for Intelligence at George Mason University, said the intelligence briefings typically yield information that is not top secret but at a lower classification level. The briefings “would most likely not include any information about sources or methods” behind the intelligence, he said.
“The fact that Trump has now been convicted of fraud unfortunately provides further evidence that the former president holds the concept of trust in very low regard. Trust is fundamental to what makes our system for protecting secrets work,” Pfeiffer told NBC News.
“I imagine the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) will weigh this additional evidence but conclude that the greater good would still be achieved by adhering to the tradition of placing him at a lower level this tour d’horizon level of global threats.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is responsible for candidate briefings, declined to comment.
During his time in the White House, Trump was accused of revealing classified information during a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and when he tweeted an image of an Iranian satellite launch. After leaving office, he was indicted on federal criminal charges for allegedly keeping a trove of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Federal prosecutors say investigators found boxes of sensitive documents stored in several areas of Mar-a-Lago, including in a bathroom, a ballroom and his bedroom.
The former president, who has pleaded not guilty, faces 40 charges, including willful concealment of national defense information, false statements and statements, conspiracy to obstruct justice, concealment of a document or record and corrupt concealment of a document.
Trump and his lawyers have dismissed the charges, arguing that he had a right to possess the documents, that he should be immune from prosecution because he deleted the papers while he was president, and that he is being singled out for prosecution in unlike other former office holders. .
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
