WH rejects call to block Clinton from receiving classified briefings

by TheHill.com - 07/06/16 2:44 PM ET

The White House on Wednesday brushed aside House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) call to block Hillary Clinton from receiving classified intelligence briefings as punishment for the FBI’s probe into her use of a private email server while secretary of State.

{mosads}White House press secretary Josh Earnest said it’s a “longstanding tradition” for major party presidential nominees to receive such briefings — and indicated that practice is almost certain to continue.

“What the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [DNI] has indicated is that they expect those briefings to move forward after the party conventions,” Earnest said.

“And the expectation that the DNI has is that they’ll provide the same information to both candidates,” he added. “We should leave those decisions in the hands of our intelligence professionals and not risk them being sullied by the political debate.”

Earnest noted that he’s given a similar response to questions about presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s fitness to receive classified briefings.

Ryan said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should deny Clinton access to classified information once she officially becomes the Democratic presidential nominee at the party’s national convention later this month.

“I think Clapper should deny Hillary Clinton access to classified information during this campaign given how she so recklessly handled classified information,” Ryan said Wednesday at a news conference.

The top Republican’s call came after FBI Director James Comey declined Tuesday to recommend criminal charges against Clinton, but excoriated the former secretary of State for being “extremely careless” in handling classified information on her private email server.

Comey said that a reasonable person of Clinton’s stature should have known that doing so posed major security risks, and added that individuals in similar circumstances have faced security or administrative sanctions.