Trump & Clinton To Begin Getting Classified Briefings

The Washington Post reports:

At some point, perhaps as early as next week, federal agents will sit down with Donald Trump and tell him classified information about the government and our foreign-policy efforts.

For Democrats, this is a point of both anguish and political calculation. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid has suggested that Trump’s murky ties to foreign interests and general inability to not speak his mind should be reason enough for the people briefing him to simply make things up.

On the Republican side, there are similar calls to ban Hillary Clinton from being briefed, including by Trump, pointing to her use of a personal email server while she served as secretary of state.

And here’s the thing: If he wanted to, President Obama could deny either or both of them the now-traditional briefings. The process doesn’t work the way you might think. For one thing, the briefings are not legally mandated. They are a courtesy provided by the sitting president, nothing more.

An online activist group has already gathered over 125,000 signatures on a petition which demands that Trump be barred from receiving the intel. The petition launched shortly after Trump invited Russia to spy on the Clinton campaign.