Trump assures CIA of support

‘Behind you,’ he says during visit

President Donald Trump visits the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., where he told members of the intelligence community, “I am so behind you.”
President Donald Trump visits the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., where he told members of the intelligence community, “I am so behind you.”

President Donald Trump visited the CIA's headquarters in northern Virginia on Saturday afternoon, his first full day in office, making a gesture of goodwill after he criticized the intelligence community in the run-up to his inauguration.








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AP

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump (center, front), and Vice President Mike Pence with his wife, Karen, (right) watch Saturday as altar children carry the candles during a National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral in Washington.

Standing in front of a memorial for fallen CIA agents, Trump assured intelligence officials, "I am so behind you." He made no mention of his criticism of the intelligence agencies after the election, including his public challenges of their assessment that Russia meddled in the White House campaign to help him win.

After his private meeting with top CIA leaders, Trump said the U.S. had been "restrained" in its efforts to combat terrorism, calling the threat "a level of evil we haven't seen."

"There is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump," he said.

[TRUMP: inauguration, photos, videos and more]

Trump also thanked the intelligence officers for their service.

CIA officers stood largely silent during Trump's remarks, though some of the roughly 400 other officers in attendance cheered on the president during his remarks.

Before taking office, Trump repeatedly criticized U.S. intelligence agencies, pushing back against their conclusions about Russia's hacking of Democratic Party emails to interfere with the 2016 election.

At a Jan. 11 news conference, Trump, in response to information that leaked to the media, accused U.S. intelligence officials of being behind a smear campaign against him. Last weekend, Trump criticized CIA Director John Brennan, who resigned Friday at the conclusion of former President Barack Obama's term, suggesting Brennan was "the leaker of Fake News."

Trump suggested Saturday that claims of conflict with the intelligence agencies were overblown. "I have a running war with the media," he said. "They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth, right?"

"They sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community," Trump said. "I just want to let you know, the reason you're the No. 1 stop is it is exactly the opposite."

Nick Shapiro, who served as a spokesman for Brennan, tweeted that the former CIA chief was "deeply saddened and angered at Trump's despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA's Memorial Wall of Agency heroes."

Trump's nominee to lead the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, a process that was delayed Friday by objections from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Inauguration crowd

In Trump's unscripted remarks, he also addressed the media, saying journalists covered his inauguration in an unfair manner in reporting on the size of the crowd.

Trump said the throngs on the National Mall stretched "all the way back to the Washington Monument." The president said the inaugural crowds topped 1 million people, but he offered no evidence of that.

Later, at the White House briefing room, spokesman Sean Spicer reinforced the message.

"There's been a lot of talk in the media about holding Donald Trump accountable. And I'm here to tell you that it goes two ways. We're going to hold the press accountable as well," Spicer said.

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the world," Spicer said. "These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong."

It's unknown how many people watched from around the world, but Nielsen estimated that 31 million viewers watched TV coverage of the inauguration. That's better than Barack Obama's second inauguration, which had 20.6 million viewers, but it's well short of his first, which drew 37.8 million.

Spicer took no questions from reporters and did not say specifically how many people the White House believes attended the inauguration. He said three large sections of the Mall that each held at least 200,000 people were "full when the president took the oath of office."

Photographs of the event showed that the Mall was not full in the sections Spicer described, with dwindling-to-nonexistent crowds near the Smithsonian Institution Building and west toward the Washington Monument.

Saturday marked the end of three days of inaugural celebrations, with Trump and his family attending a national prayer service at Washington National Cathedral traditionally held for the new president as more than two dozen faith leaders offered brief prayers and readings interspersed with religious and patriotic hymns. The president and his wife, Melania, and Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, sat in a front pew for the morning service.

Representatives from Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Mormon, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, and Baha'i traditions also participated. Trump did not speak at the event.

Trump's team

Even as he celebrated his inauguration, Trump spent part of the weekend getting his team into place.

On Friday, Trump signed legislation granting James Mattis, his pick for defense secretary, an exemption from a federal law barring former U.S. service members who have been out of uniform for less than seven years from holding the top Pentagon job.

The restriction is meant to preserve civilian control of the military. Mattis, 66, retired from the Marine Corps in 2013.

Hours later, the Senate confirmed Mattis as well as retired Gen. John Kelly, Trump's pick to lead the Homeland Security Department. Both were sworn into office late Friday by Vice President Mike Pence.

Mattis arrived at the Pentagon on Saturday for the first time in his new role.

On Friday, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying that Trump's appointment of another member of his team, son-in-law Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser does not violate federal anti-nepotism laws.

In a 14-page opinion issued Friday by the department's Office of Legal Counsel, government lawyers said the president's hiring authority exempted White House positions from federal laws barring the president from appointing relatives to lead a federal agency.

Some legal experts had raised concerns that Kushner's appointment violated a 1967 law intended to curtail nepotism in the government.

The new Justice Department opinion cited a subsequent 1978 law that gives the president the authority to appoint White House staff members without regard to other laws restricting employment and compensation of federal employees.

The opinion, issued shortly after Trump was sworn into office, appeared to reverse previous ones from the Justice Department. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the opinion noted, the department said his son could not serve as an unpaid assistant to a White House staff member.

Information for this article was contributed by Josh Lederman, Julie Pace, Jill Colvin and staff members of The Associated Press; by Justin Sink, Margaret Talev, Jennifer Jacobs and Nafeesa Syeed of Bloomberg News; and by Dan Lamothe, John Wagner and Philip Rucker of The Washington Post.

A Section on 01/22/2017

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