House

Ryan: Intel community has ‘room for improvement’

by Scott Wong - 01/05/17 12:37 PM ET

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday said he had “faith” in the nation’s intelligence community but conceded there is “always room for improvement.”

“They don’t always get everything right. We’ve seen that clearly” after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ryan told reporters. “I do have faith that our men and women, our intelligence community, are doing an incredible job sacrificing for our country. But there is always room for improvement.”

Ryan’s remarks come a day before President-elect Donald Trump receives a classified briefing from top intelligence officials about Russia’s attempts to sway the outcome of November’s presidential election.

In recent days, Trump has used Twitter to take swipes at intelligence agencies, while offering more favorable comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin and controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

{mosads}Russia “clearly tried to meddle in our political system. No two ways about it,” Ryan said. But he warned that there are efforts on the left to try to delegitimatize the outcome of this election.

“Russian didn’t tell [Democratic nominee] Hillary Clinton not to go to Wisconsin or Michigan. They didn’t put the server in her basement or on [former Rep.] Anthony Weiner’s [D-N.Y.] laptop.”

After the election, Ryan fended off calls for a special committee to investigate Russia’s hacking and meddling in the election. Instead, the Speaker said existing intelligence committees should continue their probes into the cyberattacks.

“Do we ever condone any foreign actor or any outside influence from trying to mess with our election? Of course not,” Ryan told reporters Thursday.

“Let’s deny those who are trying to delegitimatize the presidency before it starts while doing what we need to do to make sure going forward that outside actors don’t interfere with our political systems.”

Tags Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Paul Ryan