Ex-CIA director John Brennan told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Thursday that the intelligence community may withhold “sensitive” intelligence information from former President Trump even if he becomes the GOP presidential nominee later this year.
The MSNBC senior national security and intelligence analyst, expressed his belief that Trump will be briefed on some national security information – according to the 72-year tradition of sitting administrations tapping U.S. intelligence officials to brief the presidential candidates of major political parties – however, he will not get highly sensitive information.
He mentioned Trump’s indictment for mishandling classified information, suggesting that Trump might abuse such classified information if he was privy to it.
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Former CIA Director John Brennan recently spoke about how some intelligence community officials are hesitant to give former President Trump national security information they usually give to major party candidates once they secure their nominations. (Screenshot/MSNBC)
Brennan’s assessment came in response to Wallace bringing up a new Politico article detailing how U.S. intelligence officials are planning to brief Trump but have reservations due to “his handling of classified information.”
The piece stated, the “normally humdrum decision was fraught with unusual risk this year due to the pending court case and Trump’s historically cavalier attitude toward national security information.”
Brennan told Wallace, “It’s somewhat surreal that an individual who is under indictment for mishandling classified information is going to be getting classified intelligence briefings.”
He acknowledged that it is “tradition” for sitting presidents to offer these briefings, and thus “it makes sense” for Biden to do so. However, the former CIA boss hinted that intelligence leaders will not be giving particularly sensitive information that Trump could abuse.
“Now, I’m pretty certain that my former intelligence colleagues will provide briefings that are not going to do any type of damage to sources and methods in terms of providing information to Donald Trump that he could misuse.”
Brennan detailed what might be in a Trump briefing, stating, “But they will provide analytic overviews and briefings about some of the world’s hot spots, letting Donald Trump know what the assessments are at this point.”
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Brennan suggested that Trump would “misuse” U.S. intelligence given to him just as he allegedly misused classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Suggesting further that Trump can’t be trusted, he continued, “I think it’s going to be analysis that will be devoid of the sources and methods, the sensitive things that we are most concerned about, the types of things that were in all those documents that he had in the bathroom and all those areas in Mar-a-Lago.”
Brennen concluded with the point that once the former president accepts the briefings, “he probably will disparage them as he has disparaged U.S. intelligence officers as well as U.S. intelligence itself for so long over so many years.”
Brennan has been fueling theories about Trump compromising U.S. intelligence and being a foreign agent since the former president first ran for office. Throughout Trump’s first term, he pushed the narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the presidency, though he admitted behind closed doors in 2020 that investigators “found no conspiracy” between the two parties.
He was also among the around 50 former intel officials who signed the letter suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop that surfaced during the 2020 election was Russian disinformation.
Fox News Digital’s Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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