Trump Receives 1st Presidential Daily Brief
— -- President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President–elect Mike Pence are receiving their first highly sensitive presidential daily brief today, after their victory last week, multiple sources familiar with the presidential transition told ABC News.
As of 1 p.m. today, the top-secret intelligence briefing was underway and being presented to Trump and Pence in Trump Tower in Manhattan by career intelligence analysts.
The PDB, as it's commonly known, will be identical to the one President Barack Obama receives and will be available to Trump every day until he moves into the White House in January. Once in office, Trump will likely receive the brief as a morning ritual like presidents before him.
"This is an important part in ensuring the kind of smooth transition that President Obama has prioritized," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said last week, when Trump became eligible to receive them. Earnest noted that this was a courtesy President George W. Bush extended to Obama eight years ago.
Intelligence officials said the sitting president determines what the president-elect will receive, and Obama decided to grant access to the PDB, which means Trump may, at his discretion, receive the exact same information that Obama receives each morning.
Although Trump already had a few intelligence briefings by virtue of being the Republican presidential nominee, PDBs are much more specific. Updated daily, the PDB contains a region-by-region breakdown of the most urgent national security issues and can contain the most sensitive up-to-date secret information and analysis obtained by the U.S. intelligence community.
