The President cited his predecessor’s ‘erratic behavior unrelated to the insurrection’ as the reason this tradition for past presidents should be broken
When asked in an interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell if he thought Trump should receive an intelligence briefing if he requested one, Biden said, “I think not.”
“I’d rather not speculate out loud,” Biden said when asked what he fears could happen if Trump continued to receive the briefings. “I just think that there is no need for him to have the — the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”
Former presidents traditionally have been allowed to request and receive the same intelligence briefings that their successors have.
Former Trump Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon wrote in a Washington Post op-ed following the insurrection at the US Capitol last month that Trump “might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent” once he’s out of office.
In the clip of the interview that aired Friday, Biden declined to say if he’d vote to convict Trump in next week’s impeachment trial if he were a senator.
“Look, I ran like hell to defeat him because I thought he was unfit to be president,” Biden said. “I’ve watched what everybody else watched, what happened when that — that crew invaded the United States Congress. But I’m not in the Senate now. I’ll let the Senate make that decision.”
In remarks following the January insurrection, Biden told reporters, “I’ve been saying for now, well, over a year, (Trump’s) not fit to serve. He’s one of the most incompetent presidents in the history of the United States of America.”
The House of Representatives impeached Trump last month on a charge of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol that left five people dead.
In a pretrial brief filed Tuesday, the House impeachment managers accused Trump of being “singularly responsible” for the deadly riots, saying the former President’s actions spreading false conspiracy theories that the election was stolen incited his supporters to attack the Capitol and try to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power by stopping Congress from certifying the election.
The House impeachment managers on Thursday requested Trump testify at his upcoming Senate impeachment trial, but his legal team quickly rejected the invitation.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Jim Acosta, Jeremy Herb and Manu Raju contributed to this report.
