A senior Democrat, Val Demings said the country’s secrets would be sold to the highest bidder by Donald Trump if he continued to receive intelligence briefings. The remarks of Demings came after Joe Biden suggested that there was no need to provide Trump with intelligence briefings and that they should be stopped. Point to be noted that Biden’s comments to CBS will air on Sunday. He said there was a possibility that Trump would slip up and say something he shouldn’t if he was briefed with sensitive intelligence, which he is able to request. Demings agreed with the president and informed MSNBC that she believed Trump might even sell any intelligence to whoever bid the highest. She also mentioned Trump’s alleged connections to Russia.
The Washington Post reported that former president Trump hosted a meeting in the Oval Office with Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow’s then-ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, and revealed secret intelligence in 2017. The New York Times reported that Trump also owes around $400 million. It also caused concern among Democrats about national security implications tied to any loans. Demings spoke about the meeting of both leaders in 2018 and said, “We saw him stand on the stage with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and basically do everything but ask the Russian dictator for his autograph. I believe this former president and I believe it with all of my heart that he would use intelligence as a bargaining chip or sell it to the highest bidder”.
Demings added that Biden had been kind with his remarks. She said, “I prefer to join in on the words of my Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, there is no need and there’s no circumstance where the former president should receive any intelligence, not now, or quite frankly, in the future”. She was asked about President Biden’s comments to CBS. CNN also reported the White House press secretary Jen Psaki suggested on Saturday that there would be no change to a policy allowing former presidents to request intelligence. She said, “President Biden has a deep trust in his own intelligence team to make a determination about how to provide intelligence information if at any point the former president Trump requests a briefing”.