The White House is reviewing whether to grant intelligence briefings to former President Donald Trump, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
“That’s under review, but there was not a conclusion last I asked,” Psaki told reporters on Monday.
Former presidents receive routine briefings and are able to access classified information.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said last month that Trump should not get intelligence briefings.
“There’s no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing, not now, not in the future,” said Schiff told CBS. “I don’t think he can be trusted with it now and in the future, he certainly can’t be trusted.”
That view was echoed by Susan Gordon, Trump’s former principal deputy director of national intelligence, who penned an open in The Washington Post arguing that Trump should be cut off from further briefings on Jan. 20. She wrote that Trump shouldn’t be briefed because he intends to remain in politics, alleging, without offering evidence, that “it is not clear that he understands the tradecraft to which he has been exposed, the reasons the knowledge he has acquired must be protected from disclosure, or the intentions and capabilities of adversaries and competitors who will use any means to advance their interests at the expense of ours.”
The campaign to cut Trump off from intelligence briefings is part of a larger effort to ostracize him from the public and the government.