Less than two months before the presidential election, Trump has refused to brief both the House and the Senate on election security.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in part in a joint statement provided to PolliticusUSA:
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has informed us that it will no longer provide briefings to Members of Congress, including the House and Senate Intelligence committees, on foreign efforts to interfere in our upcoming election. This is a shocking abdication of its lawful responsibility to keep the Congress currently informed, and a betrayal of the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy. This intelligence belongs to the American people, not the agencies which are its custodian. And the American people have both the right and the need to know that another nation, Russia, is trying to help decide who their president should be.
The ODNI had requested the opportunity to brief the intelligence committees and the full US House of Representatives in mid-September and has now canceled those briefings and said it would hold no others. This is shameful and—coming only weeks before the election—demonstrates that the Trump Administration is engaged in a politicized effort to withhold election-related information from Congress and the American people at the precise moment that greater transparency and accountability is required. This keeps both the American people and the Congress in the dark, when both are in need of the information.
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Trump is now trying to hide information about foreign governments interfering in the presidential election from Congress. Trump is illegally shutting down the election security briefings to the Gang of 8 because he doesn’t want the American people to find out about Russia’s efforts to help him win in 2020.
Trump’s campaign of cheating is in full motion, and it will be up to the American people to mount an overwhelming effort to throw him out of office.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
