While advisers to Donald Trump and President Barack Obama spar over Russia, the President-elect met with is meeting with the outgoing homeland security chief Friday.
The sit-down with Secretary Jeh Johnson was announced Friday morning by Trump’s spokesman Jason Miller, who did not elaborate on the topics of the meeting. Johnson was spotted entering Trump Tower in New York around 10 a.m.
The Obama administration, Hillary Clinton campaign and Trump’s transition team are at odds over Russia’s meddling in the November election. The White House press secretary alleged Trump was aware of Russian hacking into the Democratic National Committee. The deputy executive director of Trump’s transition team said Democrats are “using the Russian hacking to de-legitimize” Trump’s victory. And Clinton’s former campaign manager wrote that “deeply broken” FBI should have done more.
Obama has been hesitant to directly criticize Trump. He said in an interview that aired late Thursday that he would “take action” and that the conversation around Russia and hacking response should not be a “partisan issue.”
“It requires us not to re-litigate the election, it requires us not to point fingers, it requires us to just say, here’s what happened, let’s be honest about it, and let’s not use it as a political football but let’s figure out how to prevent it from happening in the future,” Obama told NPR.
The meeting follows one between Trump and Obama, where the President said they discussed the “importance of us making sure that in how we approach intelligence gathering and how we think about fighting terrorism and keeping the country secure.”
Prior to the meeting, Trump was receiving what Miller called an intelligence briefing from his incoming national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn.