President-elect Donald Trump’s skepticism about the United States intelligence community’s claims Russia interfered with the 2016 election are healthy given its past failures, US Vice President-elect Mike Pence said on Wednesday.
“The President-elect has expressed his very sincere and healthy skepticism about intelligence conclusions,” Pence told reporters. “Given some of the intelligence failures of the recent years the President-elect has made it clear that he’s skeptical about some of the conclusions.” Earlier on Wednesday, Trump tweeted that an intelligence briefing regarding alleged Russian involvement in hacking the US elections has been delayed until Friday.
Pence confirmed this statement saying that he and Trump would receive a briefing from intelligence community leaders on Friday.
The directors of the CIA and FBI, John Brennan and James Comey, as well as the Director of National intelligence James Clapper will be present at Trump’s briefing.
In December 2016, Trump agreed to listen to an intelligence briefing on alleged Russian involvement “to be updated on the facts,” despite his dismissive stance of allegations that Russia was involved in ‘hacking’ the US presidential elections.
Last week, the US President Barack Obama’s administration last week ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, the closure of two Russian diplomatic compounds and new sanctions against six Russian individuals and five entities over Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, for Russia’s involvement in the US elections which the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.
Source: Sputnik
