Joe Biden moves forward without help from Donald Trump’s intel team
The presidential race was hovering in limbo in 2000 when outgoing President Bill Clinton decided to let then-Gov. George W. Bush read the ultra-secret daily brief of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence. Clinton was a Democrat and his vice president, Al Gore, was running against Republican Bush. Gore had been reading the so-called President’s Daily Brief for eight years; Clinton decided to bring Bush into the fold in case he won and he did. President Donald Trump has not followed Clinton’s lead. As he contests this year’s election results, Trump has not authorized President-elect Joe Biden to lay eyes on the brief. National security and intelligence experts hope Trump changes his mind, citing the need for an incoming president to be fully prepared to confront any national security issues on Day One. “Our adversaries aren’t waiting for the transition to take place,” says former Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who was chairman of the House intelligence committee. “Joe Biden should receive the President’s Daily Brief starting today. He needs to know what the latest threats are and begin to plan accordingly. This isn’t about politics; this is about national security.” U.S. adversaries can take advantage of the country during an American presidential transition and key foreign issues will be bearing down on Biden the moment he steps into the Oval Office. Among them: Unless Trump extends or negotiates a new nuclear arms accord with Russia before Inauguration Day, Biden will have only 16 days to act before the expiration of the last remaining treaty reining in the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals. Perhaps U.S. spies have picked up tidbits about the Russians’ redlines in the negotiations, or about weapons it really wants to keep out of the treaty. That’s the type of information that might be in the PDB, a daily summary of high-level, classified information and analysis on national security issues that’s been offered to presidents since 1946. It is coordinated and delivered by the Office of the National Intelligence Director with input from the CIA and other agencies. It is tailored for each president, depending on whether they prefer oral or written briefs or both, short summaries or long reports on paper or electronically. Having access to the PDB also could help Biden craft a possible response to North Korea, which has a history of firing off missiles or conducting nuclear tests shortly before or after new presidents take office. Biden has decades of experience in foreign affairs and national security, but he likely has not been privy to the latest details about how Iran is back to enriching uranium, or the active cyber attack operations of Russia, China and Iran. China’s crackdown on Hong Kong is heating up. And the threat from Islamic extremists, although curbed, still remains. Biden is trying to play down the significance of the delay in getting access to the PDB. “Obviously the PDB would be useful but, it’s not necessary. I’m not the sitting president now,” Biden said Tuesday. He didn’t answer a question about whether he’d tried to reach out to Trump himself on this or any other issue, saying only, “Mr. President, I look forward to speaking with you.” He was also asked about needing access to classified information as soon as possible if Trump doesn’t concede the race. “Look, access to classified information is useful. But I’m not in a position to make any decisions on those issues anyway,” Biden said. “As I said, one president at a time. He will be president until Jan. 20. It would be nice to have it, but it’s not critical.” Biden is familiar with the PDB, having read it during his eight years as vice president. But threats are ever-changing and as Inauguration Day nears, his need for Trump to let him get eyes on the intelligence brief will become more critical. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., predicted that the issue of whether Biden will get access to the intelligence brief will be resolved soon. “I’ve already started engaging in this area. … And if that’s not occurring by Friday, I will step in and push and say this needs to occur so that regardless of the outcome of the election, whichever way that it goes, people can be ready for that actual task,” Lankford told KRMG in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Wednesday. He said Vice President-elect Kamala Harris also should be getting the briefings, which should not be a problem because she already has security clearances as a member of the Senate intelligence committee. While the Bush team had access to the intelligence brief in 2000, an election recount delayed the Bush team’s access to government agencies and resources for more than five weeks. Biden is missing out on all counts: More than a week into his transition, Biden doesn’t have access to the PDB, the agencies or government resources to help him get ready to take charge. “President-elect Joe Biden and his transition team should not suffer a similar delay,” John Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff under Clinton, and Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card wrote in a joint op-ed published this week in The Washington Post. “We have since learned the serious costs of a delayed transition,” they wrote. “Less than eight months after Bush’s inauguration, two planes flew into the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 Americans.” The 9/11 Commission Report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks warns of the danger in slow-walking presidential transition work in general, not just the intelligence piece. The Bush administration didn’t have its deputy Cabinet officers in place until the spring of 2001 and critical subcabinet positions were not confirmed until that summer — if then, the report said. For now, the office of National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe says it can’t begin talking with the Biden transition team until a federal agency starts the process of transition, which the Trump administration is delaying. The office, which oversees more than a dozen U.S. intelligence agencies, said it must follow
Face to face: Donald Trump and Joe Biden to meet for final debate
President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, are set to square off in their final debate Thursday, one of the last high-profile opportunities for the trailing incumbent to change the trajectory of an increasingly contentious campaign. Worried about losing the White House, some advisers are urging Trump to trade his aggressive demeanor from the first debate for a lower-key style that puts Biden more squarely in the spotlight. But it’s unclear whether the president will listen. Biden, who has stepped off the campaign trail in favor of debate prep, expects Trump to get intensely personal. The former vice president and his inner circle see the president’s approach chiefly as an effort to distract from the coronavirus, its economic fallout, and other crises. With less than two weeks until Election Day, Biden is leading most national polls and has a narrower advantage in the battleground states that could decide the race. More than 42 million people have already cast their ballots. The debate, moderated by NBC’s Kristen Welker, is a final chance for both men to make their case to a television audience of tens of millions of voters. “The rule is that last debates before the election have a big impact,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who made clear the legacy of the candidates’ first faceoff: “That was the most out-of-control presidential debate we have seen.” Trump, who staged a remarkable comeback in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, believes he can do it again by using the power of the presidency to attack his rival. Trump on Tuesday called on Attorney General William Barr to immediately launch an investigation into unverified claims about Biden and his son Hunter Biden, effectively demanding that the Justice Department muddy his political opponent and abandon its historic resistance to getting involved in elections. The president has promoted an unconfirmed New York Post report published last week that cites an email in which an official from Ukrainian gas company Burisma thanked Hunter Biden, who served on the company’s board, for arranging for him to meet Joe Biden during a 2015 visit to Washington. The Biden campaign has rejected Trump’s assertion of wrongdoing and noted that Biden’s schedule did not show a meeting with the Burisma official. Some former national security officials and other experts said the episode raised multiple red flags of a possible foreign disinformation effort, especially given the involvement of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, and Giuliani’s active role in promoting an anti-Biden narrative on Ukraine. But John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, dismissed that disinformation theory. And the FBI appeared to endorse Ratcliffe’s position in a letter to a Senate committee that had requested information on a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden. Trump’s attacks on the Biden family have been relentless, including his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, which led to Trump’s impeachment. It’s part of a determined, yet so-far-unsuccessful effort to drive up his opponent’s negatives, as he did with Hillary Clinton four years ago. Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said, “Trump is still the political outsider, while Biden is the ultimate insider. We now know that Biden allowed his son to sell access to him while he was vice president.” While Biden will defend his own record and his son, aides have said, he hopes to focus on making the case that Trump is unfit for office and let the nation down during a confluence of crises. “He knows that people want to hear about how we’re going to help working families get through the end of the month and pay the rent,” his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, said Wednesday in North Carolina. “That’s what people care about, and one of the things I love about Joe Biden — he doesn’t take on or talk about other people’s kids.” The one-two punch of the first debate and the president’s three-day hospital stint after contracting COVID-19 rattled his base of support and triggered alarm among Republicans who fear the White House and Senate could be slipping away. The initial debate was the most tumultuous in modern history, with a belligerent tone that was persistent and somehow fitting for what has been an extraordinarily ugly campaign. Amid heated clashes over the pandemic, the Supreme Court, and the integrity of the election itself, Trump refused to condemn white supremacists who have supported him, telling one such group known as the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” The two men frequently talked over each other with Trump interrupting, nearly shouting, so often that Biden eventually snapped at him, “Will you shut up, man?” Aides have urged Trump, who has skipped debate prep, to show some restraint this time, allowing Biden to speak more and get himself in trouble with verbal gaffes and lapses. But the president has made no promises. “Some people think, ‘Let him talk,’ because he loses his train (of thought), he just loses it and he doesn’t speak the train of thought,” Trump said in a town hall discussion taped at the White House Rose Garden and aired by Sinclair Broadcast Group on Wednesday evening. “But we’ll see what happens. I mean, you will have to be there.” It was two days after the first debate in Cleveland when Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. The White House has refused to reveal when the president had last tested negative before the debate, raising questions as to whether he was already infected when he took the stage. After the diagnosis, the Commission on Presidential Debates ruled that the second debate, which was to have been held last week, be virtual. Trump balked, leading to the cancellation of the debate and the two men holding dueling town halls instead, speaking at the same time more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) apart. On the debate stage Wednesday, two large plexiglass shields had been put in place in front of the candidates’ lecterns. On Thursday night, in an effort to curtail interruptions, Trump and Biden will each have
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Doubts emerge about Donald Trump pick for U.S. intelligence chief
President Donald Trump’s pick for national intelligence director has been mayor of a small Texas city, a federal prosecutor and a member of Congress. But questions were already emerging Monday about whether those qualifications are adequate for the position as the nation confronts threats that include foreign election interference, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and the risk of war with Iran. Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe is also known as a Trump loyalist, which makes his lack of relevant experience even more striking at a time when current and former government officials expect Russia to look to interfere in the 2020 presidential election just as it did in unprecedented fashion when Trump first ran. “Ratcliffe comes to the job with the least national security experience and the most partisan political experience of any previous director of national intelligence,” said Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director who now hosts the “Intelligence Matters” podcast. The director of national intelligence has oversight of the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies, a significant job touching all corners of national security policymaking. If confirmed, Ratcliffe would be the principal intelligence adviser to Trump, who has appeared determined to surround himself with vocal protectors and defenders even in national security positions that haven’t historically been perceived as overtly partisan. It is unclear what specific experience Ratcliffe will bring in helping thwart foreign government efforts to interfere in American politics. Also unknown is whether skepticism he has voiced in Congress about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign will affect his preparation for, or response to, any foreign influence or cyberattacks on campaigns. Ratcliffe, who was among the most aggressive Republican questioners of Mueller at public hearings last week, would replace outgoing director Dan Coats at a time of broader reshuffling within the national security leadership structure. “It’s a moment when Donald Trump can deepen his personal stranglehold over the intelligence function and knock out any voices of dissent to his particular worldview,” said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland. “That’s a scary thing for the country.” The selection comes months after Trump empowered another ally, Attorney General William Barr, to disclose still-secret intelligence collected by other agencies as part of the Russia investigation. Ratcliffe has made clear his skepticism of that investigation and his belief that Trump was treated improperly by investigators, saying in a talk show appearance Sunday that it was time to move on from discussion of impeachment. Coats, who will step down next month, repeatedly clashed with Trump. He was publicly steadfast about his conviction that Russia had interfered in the election even in the face of the president’s ambivalence. He appeared to scoff when told in an interview that Trump had invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington. And in his resignation letter, he cited as an accomplishment the appointment of an election security executive “to support the whole-of-government effort to address threats against our election.” Tensions with Trump notwithstanding, Coats did bring to the job decades of Washington experience, including lengthy stints as an Indiana congressman and U.S. ambassador to Germany. His predecessor in the Obama administration, James Clapper, spent decades in the military and in intelligence, including as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.Ratcliffe does not have equivalent credentials, though his supporters are likely to point to his experience as a prosecutor as well as his recent membership on the House Intelligence Committee, which he joined in January. Ratcliffe was first elected to Congress in 2014, and his experience as top federal prosecutor in east Texas gave him instant clout when Republicans ran the Judiciary panel. He was one of the main questioners when Republicans hauled in Justice Department officials to question them about whether they were biased against Trump in the early days of the FBI’s Russia probe. It’s unclear whether concerns about his credentials will trip up the confirmation process. Confirmation takes a simple 51-vote majority, under new rules in the Senate, but that leaves slim room for error with Republicans holding a 53-seat majority. Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Monday that he would move swiftly to push the nomination through his panel. “I don’t have any concerns,” he told reporters. Several Republicans on the intelligence panel said they didn’t know Ratcliffe and would wait to meet with him. “I’m open on this,” said Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a critical swing vote for the GOP who sits on the panel, said the job is very important to her because she co-wrote the legislation that created it 15 years ago. She said she had never heard of Ratcliffe before last week, so she couldn’t comment on his qualifications, but she said she cares deeply “about having an independent, well-qualified individual in that post.” Republican Sen. John Cornyn, another member of the committee, said that his Texas colleague is a “tremendous human being” and that he is “confident he can rise to the challenge.” Democrats were immediately critical. The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, said Ratcliffe’s questioning at the Mueller hearings “raises huge questions in my mind” about his ability to be independent. Even before Mueller testified, Trump had his eye on Ratcliffe, who had already established himself as an outspoken defender of the president and raised Trump-backed questions about the conduct of the intelligence community in the Russia probe. But two officials said his aggressive questioning of the former special counsel cemented the president’s view that he was the right person for the job. Last Wednesday, he told Mueller that while he accepted that Russia’s interference was “sweeping and systematic,” he was also concerned about how much intelligence came from an ex-British spy who received Democratic funding to investigate Trump and whose research helped form the basis of a secret surveillance warrant to monitor the communications of a former Trump campaign aide. He pointedly accused Mueller of departing from the special counsel’s own rules by writing “180 pages about decisions that
