President-elect Donald Trump said the "intelligence" briefing he was to have with Obama administration officials was moved to Friday — noting "perhaps more time needed to build a case."
"Very strange!" Trump said Tuesday on Twitter:
Trump said Friday he would meet this week with intelligence officials to discuss Russian hacking after he came under fire for praising President Vladimir Putin for not retaliating after President Barack Obama expelled 35 Kremlin diplomats and closed two compounds because of hacking by Moscow.
The president-elect has long questioned U.S. intelligence information on Russian hacking and Moscow's involvement in the November election.
"It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things," Trump said in the Friday statement. "Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."
Both President Obama and Democrat Hillary Clinton have scored Russia for hacking into the Democratic National Committee and other party operatives and for meddling in the election.
In addition, former CIA Director James Woolsey said Tuesday he was not sure whether Trump would make any announcement after the intelligence briefing.
"I would leave it up to his people that work on press statements and so forth to carry that information," Woolsey, a Trump national security adviser, told Anderson Cooper on CNN. "I don't know."
Woolsey said Monday that Trump telling reporters on New Year's Eve he was privy to information on Russian hacking others might not have showed the president-elect was "playing with" the American public.
He told Jim Sciutto on CNN that Trump was an "expert at this kind of weaving around and attracting everybody’s attention."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.