US INTEL CHIEF ENDS SECURITY BRIEFINGS ON CAPITOL HILL

The nation’s top intelligence official has informed Congress that his office will no longer give in-person election security briefings on Capitol Hill, a move that raised concern among lawmakers Saturday (Sunday, August 30, 2020 in Manila) about the public’s right to know about foreign interference in the upcoming presidential election, Deb Riechmann reported for the Associated Press (AP).

President Donald Trump said National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe made the decision because the administration “got tired” of intelligence about election security leaking from Congress. “They leaked the information ... and what’s even worse, they leaked the wrong information and we got tired of it,” Trump told reporters while attending a briefing on Hurricane Laura in Orange, Texas. He didn’t offer details to support his statement.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said the idea that the national intelligence director’s office would stop briefing Congress on foreign threats to the US election is “an outrage” and that written updates were “flatly insufficient.” King said “America’s election — indeed, our foundation of democracy itself — is under threat as we face weaponized disinformation from global foes around the planet,” King, a member of the Senate’s intelligence committee, said in a lengthy statement. “To stifle and limit the American peoples’ awareness of this fact cannot be explained — or allowed.”

On Saturday, Democratic lawmakers criticized Ratcliffe’s decision, which critics said was made under pressure from Trump. “This intelligence belongs to the American people, not the agencies which are its custodian,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democrat who chairs the House’s intelligence committee, said in a joint statement. “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.” Pelosi and Schiff called the decision a “betrayal of the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy.”