WASHINGTON – Several Senate Republicans have broken with the Trump administration to argue that President-elect Joe Biden should get access to classified intelligence briefings, even though the president continues to contest the election results.
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, said he will intervene if the Trump administration doesn’t start allowing Biden to receive the daily intelligence briefings by Friday.
Incoming presidents typically have access to those assessments during the transition, so they can be prepared to deal with any national security threats on day one.
“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 Tulsa radio station KRMG on Wednesday.
“If that’s not occurring by Friday, I will step in,” said Lankford, who sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Lankford’s remarks come amid a broader, behind-the-scenes tussle between the president and Senate Republicans over the fate of CIA Director Gina Haspel. Trump’s allies are reportedly pushing for Haspel’s ouster, while Senate Republicans have come to her defense.
Trump has long distrusted and derided the intelligence community. On Tuesday, Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations consultant who is close to Donald Trump Jr., accused Haspel of undermining the president, though he did not specify how.
“Why the hell are Republican senators trying to manipulate @realDonaldTrump into keeping Gina Haspel, who undermines Trump and subverts his agenda at every turn?” Schwartz tweeted.
He singled out three high-ranking GOP senators – John Cornyn of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky – and said they were “getting played by a master case officer.”
McConnell met with Haspel in his Capitol Hill office on Tuesday, an unusual private session that drew the attention of reporters. They both declined to say what the meeting was about, but McConnell is a strong backer of Haspel and may have been signaling his opposition to her ouster.
Cornyn, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, took a more public stance.
“Intelligence should not be partisan. Not about manipulation, it is about preserving impartial, nonpartisan information necessary to inform policy makers” and so they can protect the U.S., Cornyn posted in response to Schwartz’s tweet.
Cornyn’s remark prompted a fierce response from Trump Jr. He suggested Cornyn and the other GOP senators were “taking a trained liar’s word” on the dust-up instead of consulting with others in the White House, such as Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows or his national security adviser Robert O’Brien.
The intra-party GOP fight comes as many experts warn that Trump’s refusal to concede and allow Biden to begin his transition could harm national security.
“Our adversaries aren’t waiting for the transition to take place,” former Rep. Mike Rogers, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee when he was in Congress, tweeted earlier this week in urging for Biden’s access to critical intelligence information.
“He needs to know what the latest threats are & begin to plan accordingly,” said Rogers. “This isn’t about politics; this is about national security.”
So far, a key Trump appointee has refused to affirm Biden’s electoral win, preventing the president-elect’s team from beginning its official transition. Emily W. Murphy, head of the federal General Services Administration (GSA), has yet to sign off on an official declaration recognizing Biden’s victory – a move that blocks his access to the intelligence briefings, as well as other critical materials and funding his team needs to prepare for the transfer of power.
The White House and the GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lankford, a member of the Senate Oversight Committee, said he has “already started engaging in this area.” He noted President Bill Clinton made available briefings to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 2000, even though that election was much closer and hotly contested for weeks after voting ended.
Most Republican lawmakers have refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory and backed Trump’s refusal to allow the transition to begin.
But Lankford is not alone in his push for Biden to be allowed to ramp up his official transition. Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election on Saturday. States will certify their election results in the coming weeks.
Rubio, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said any declaration from the GSA would not undercut the legal claims that President Donald Trump’s campaign is making in several states. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that voter fraud and other irregularities cost him the election.
“We need to have that contingency in place,” Rubio, R-Fla., told Bloomberg News earlier this week. “I don’t think allowing the GSA to move forward on some of the transition work prejudices in any way any of the legal claims the president intends to make.”
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has also argued that Biden should be allowed to begin the transition process, saying it’s a matter of U.S. national security.
“It’s very much in our national interest, in our foreign policy interest, national security interest, to make sure that if there’s a new team that may become the leadership team, that they be given all access as quickly as possible,” Romney told NBC News.
McConnell, who has not acknowledged Biden’s victory, said that Trump is “100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”
Biden said Trump’s fraud allegations are baseless and his unwillingness to concede is “an embarrassment,” but insisted it will not impede the transition.
“We are already beginning the transition,” he said. “Nothing’s going to stop that.”
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