DNI stops in-person briefings

House, Senate intel panels likely to view news as bombshell

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, will no longer give two oversight committee in Congress “in-person” briefings on election security and will rely instead on written updates, CNN reported Saturday.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper, in a phone interview on “CNN Newsroom” with Fredericka Whitfield, reported that the news would likely land like a bombshell on both sides of the aisle.

According to CNN, which cited an unidentified senior administration official, the DNI will not give sitdown briefings to the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, now headed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Instead, the committees will get written updates, Tapper reported.

Both committees will still be able to get in-person briefings in other ways, including from the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, for example, CNN reported.

Bill Evanina, the top U.S. counterintelligence official, had been charged with the briefings on current election security threats, but Saturday’s news indicates that he will no longer be leading those discussions on Capitol Hill, CNN reported.

Earlier this month, Evanina said China “prefers” an outcome in which President Donald Trump is not re-elected in November and Russia is working to “denigrate” former Vice President Joe Biden’s

White House bid.

“Republicans and Democrats on those committees prefer in-person briefings so that they can ask questions, challenge assumptions, conduct their oversight role properly,” Tapper said.

Schiff tweeted that the move shows that “the administration clearly does not want Congress or the country informed of what Russia is doing. The last DNI was fired for doing so, and the IC has now been fully brought to heel.”

In a joint statement, Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said they expect both the administration and the intelligence community “to keep us fully and accurately informed” and “resume the briefings.”

“If they are unwilling to, we will consider the full range of tools available to the House to compel compliance,” the joint statement concludes.

John Ratcliffe