Senator Concerned About 'Pre-Cover-Up' and 'Something Nefarious' After DNI Cancels In-Person Election Security Briefings

Senator Angus King raised concerns on Monday that there could be a "pre-cover-up" and "something nefarious" going on after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence informed the House of Representatives and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence that it will no longer be providing them with in-person briefings on election security.

"By cutting off these briefings and particularly the in-person part, what we're basically saying is, the intelligence community may know something nefarious is going on. They may know Russia is attacking us in a variety of ways, but they're not going to tell us," King, an independent from Maine, told CNN during a Monday interview. "And if they don't tell us, they're effectively not telling the American people," he said.

The senator suggested that "it looks like a pre-cover-up."

"It looks like they don't want to share the information, they're covering up information that may or may not—I don't know what they've got or not—what they have or don't have, but it looks like they're trying to keep this information from the public, so that when everybody goes to vote on November 3, they won't know to the extent to which they've been attempted to be influenced by the Russians or some other country," King said.

Newsweek reached out to the White House and the ODNI for comment, but they did not respond by the time of publication.

The Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who took over the role on May 26 after being appointed by President Donald Trump, had sent letters dated August 28 to the committees saying the in-person briefings would be canceled. However, the ODNI plans to continue providing briefings in writing.

Trump on Saturday dismissed concerns about the decision to forego the in-person briefings. He said that Ratcliffe was concerned about information being leaked from the committees to the public.

"[Ratcliffe] wants to do it in a different form because you have leakers on the committee, obviously, leakers that are doing bad things, probably not even legal to leak, but we'll look into that separately," the president said during an event.

Democratic leaders quickly raised concerns, saying that the decision went against the ODNI's "lawful responsibility."

"This is a shocking abdication of its lawful responsibility to keep the Congress currently informed, and a betrayal of the public's right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said in a joint statement.

"The American people have both the right and the need to know that another nation, Russia, is trying to help decide who their president should be," they said.

But Senator Ron John, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, took issue with Democrats' concerns during a Sunday interview with CNN.

"This is being blown so way out of proportion, I could probably count on one or two fingers the things that are actually classified in those briefings," Johnson said. "There is no surprise here.… We know that foreign actors are trying to influence, trying to destabilize our political system, but, again, we're doing Putin's work for him." The senator suggested that Democrats have "destabilized our politics" by constantly raising concerns about Russia and its support for the president.

U.S. intelligence agencies and a nearly two-year probe by special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election in an effort to disparage former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and to favor Trump. Although Mueller's investigation did not conclude that Trump or members of his campaign had conspired with Russia, the special counsel described Moscow's efforts as among the "most serious" challenges to U.S. democracy.