Donald Trump’s administration has prevented Joe Biden’s transition team from meeting with Pentagon intelligence agencies, said a former intelligence officer familiar with the discussions with “CNN.”
The lack of collaboration on the part of the Trump team, which still does not accept defeat, means that the President-elect’s team has not yet met with the main military intelligence agencies of the Department of Defense, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA , English acronym) and the National Security Agency (NSA). This appears to be yet another obstacle to the transition to the presidency of Joe Biden, who was elected in November, although other meetings have already started after a few weeks of delay.
According to the Pentagon, some briefings on Friday on military issues, where high-level politics and international security issues were addressed, although intelligence was not one of the topics addressed. According to The Washington Post, the Department of Defense is led by Mark Esper, who is very loyal to Donald Trump, and this may be the reason why Biden’s team has not yet had access to the issue at hand.
The source quoted by “CNN” indicates that the first contacts for the meetings to start were made last week, but the Pentagon will have informed that there would not be any meetings before the questions that they wanted to clarify were presented in advance, as well as a list with the name of the people who would be interlocutors on the side of Joe Biden’s team.
Subsequently, the Biden team’s requests would be reviewed by the Department of Defense general council and by Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s lawyer appointed to lead the Pentagon’s transition process.
Department of Defense spokesman Sue Gough denied that there was any problem with Joe Biden’s team with respect to matters related to the Pentagon’s intelligence services. “There was no access denied,” said Gough in a statement quoted by “CNN”, adding that “we continue to work with the transition team to schedule all requested interviews, briefings and updates.”
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