Top Dem on House intel panel: Trump undermining national security with false claims
Rep. Adam Schiff — the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee — said Tuesday that "the most alarming national security development of last week" was President-elect Donald Trump's tweet claiming that millions of people voted illegally in the presidential election.
Schiff, D-Calif., said Trump's unsubstantiated claim in a Nov. 27 tweet that he would have won the popular vote "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally" undermines the credibility of the presidency.
That will make it harder for the incoming administration to persuade Americans and the rest of the world that the U.S. government has been hacked by a foreign government when that happens, especially when there is often little concrete evidence that can be shown to the public, Schiff said.
"That (persuading the public) only works if the president has credibility," Schiff told reporters at a newsmaker breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. "So when you have a president-elect that sends out patently false information ... that impugns the credibility of the presidency, that is going to be a severe problem."
Schiff said it also underscores that Trump has not yet begun acting like a president-elect.
"It demonstrates the president-elect has not undertaken the most important part of the transition ... the recognition that his words have much greater significance than ever before," Schiff said.
He said it's important for the president of Pakistan to know if Trump is really serious when Trump says, during a phone call, that he will visit the country. Similarly, China needs to know what a Trump tweet really means and whether it should be taken seriously, Schiff said.
The congressman said that foreign nations are already concluding that "we can't really put stock in what the new American president says."
Trump officials had no immediate response Tuesday.
Schiff had kinder words for some of Trump's appointees.
He said that Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., whom Trump has picked to be his CIA director, "has every capability of doing that job well" despite being extremely partisan as a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which focused largely on attacking Hillary Clinton's record as secretary of State.
"I think that he's an enormously bright person," Schiff said of Pompeo. "He's also someone who works hard and does his homework. He also is someone who has the temperament for the job."
Schiff said he was also happy to see Trump's choice for Defense secretary, retired Marine Corps general James Mattis, push back against Trump's support for torturing suspected terrorists. Mattis has said that he does not believe that waterboarding is effective in getting suspects to talk, and that he can coax more information from them with "a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers."
Even if Trump tries to reinstate torture, it "is never going to happen," Schiff said, adding that there is "massive resistance (to torture) within the intelligence community."