House Speaker Paul Ryan is siding with President-elect Donald Trump in his fight with the nation's intelligence community, the Washington Examiner reports.
Ryan said Thursday Trump is "understandably very frustrated" with intelligence officials. He said Trump's concern over unverified intelligence leaks "is completely understandable … because it isn't fair and all of it is unsubstantiated."
Trump has angrily slammed reports about an unverified Russian dossier that includes unflattering information about him. The source of the leaked information has not been determined, according to the Examiner.
Ryan predicted Trump's view of the overall intelligence community would improve once he begins working with them closely, the Examiner notes.
"I do believe as he begins to see what the men and women in our intelligence community do, and I'm not talking about the political people at the top, I think he is going to learn to appreciate what they do," Ryan said.
Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden warned Trump's continued public criticism of the intelligence community risked undermining national security, the Los Angeles Times reports.
"It is really very damaging, in my view, to our standing in the world for the president to take one of the crown jewels of our national defense and denigrate it," Biden said.
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