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Republican (Lankford) backpedals after saying he'd 'step in' if Biden doesn't receive briefings
Source: The Guardian
Republican backpedals after saying he’d ‘step in’ if Biden doesn’t receive briefings
Senator James Lankford said ‘no loss’ from Biden receiving intelligence briefings but later tweeted support for baseless voter fraud claims
Tom McCarthy
@TeeMcSee
Thu 12 Nov 2020 14.42 GMT
A Republican senator backpedaled on Twitter Wednesday night after telling a local Oklahoma radio station he would “step in” if Joe Biden did not begin receiving daily intelligence briefings by the end of the week.
In an interview with local KRMG, first picked up by the Hill, the Oklahoma senator James Lankford was asked what he thought of the refusal by the office of the director of national intelligence to brief the president-elect until another arm of the bureaucracy certified Biden’s victory.
“There is no loss from him getting the briefings, and to be able to do that,” said Lankford. “And if that’s not occurring by Friday, I will step in as well, and to be able to push and to say this needs to occur, so that regardless of the outcome of the election ... people can be ready for that actual task.”
In his suggestion that the “outcome of the election” was still in doubt, Lankford made himself an ally to Donald Trump’s cause of overturning the election or, failing that, spoiling public faith in it, as a means of weakening Biden.
Yet apparently under pressure to clarify that he did not mean to suggest that Biden might have won, Lankford later tweeted support for the president’s pursuit of baseless voter fraud accusations.
-snip-
Senator James Lankford said ‘no loss’ from Biden receiving intelligence briefings but later tweeted support for baseless voter fraud claims
Tom McCarthy
@TeeMcSee
Thu 12 Nov 2020 14.42 GMT
A Republican senator backpedaled on Twitter Wednesday night after telling a local Oklahoma radio station he would “step in” if Joe Biden did not begin receiving daily intelligence briefings by the end of the week.
In an interview with local KRMG, first picked up by the Hill, the Oklahoma senator James Lankford was asked what he thought of the refusal by the office of the director of national intelligence to brief the president-elect until another arm of the bureaucracy certified Biden’s victory.
“There is no loss from him getting the briefings, and to be able to do that,” said Lankford. “And if that’s not occurring by Friday, I will step in as well, and to be able to push and to say this needs to occur, so that regardless of the outcome of the election ... people can be ready for that actual task.”
In his suggestion that the “outcome of the election” was still in doubt, Lankford made himself an ally to Donald Trump’s cause of overturning the election or, failing that, spoiling public faith in it, as a means of weakening Biden.
Yet apparently under pressure to clarify that he did not mean to suggest that Biden might have won, Lankford later tweeted support for the president’s pursuit of baseless voter fraud accusations.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/12/james-lankford-republican-senator-biden-intelligence-briefings
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