Louis Nelson at Politico reports that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has denied a report that officials have withheld intelligence from Pr*sident Donald Trump.
The ODNI statement, released late Wednesday night, comes in response to a Wall Street Journal story reporting that intelligence officials have kept intelligence from Trump over concerns that that information might be leaked or otherwise compromised by a White House reportedly lacking in organization and besieged by internal conflict.
"Any suggestion that the U.S. Intelligence Community is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the President and his national security team is not true,” the ODNI statement said.
Reporters of the paywalled Journal article, previously written about here, cited unnamed “current and former officials” in the spy community as saying that some sensitive intelligence had been withheld because of what amounts to a lack of trust. As previously noted, there could be a lot of intersecting agendas here and sussing out the truth is complicated by the fact Trump is a pathetic and possibly pathological liar, and several intelligence agencies have a dark side to their history and lying is mandatory tradecraft.
Whether the withholding occurred or did not, it’s certainly not hard to imagine intelligence officials wanting to withhold information from someone whose behavior in a relative would be disturbing—but in a president is downright alarming.