“President Trump and his administration had mishandled classified intelligence a number of times.”

Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” host Jim Sciutto — who broke the story that the CIA was forced to pull an highly-placed U.S. spy from Russia after Donald Trump reportedly exposed him — said American intelligence officials grew more concerned after Trump held a private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Appearing with fellow host John Berman, Sciutto said he felt at liberty to discuss more details about the agent who is back in the U.S., now that the New York Times released information they had received.

According to the CNN reporter, not only were intel officials concerned about Trump exposing sensitive information in the Oval Office with Russian officials, but they grew concerned when he confiscated his interpreter’s transcripts from his Putin meeting.

“I spoke to five separate sources for this story,” Sciutto relayed. “People who served in the Trump administration in the highest levels of the intelligence agencies and also on Capitol Hill, handling sensitive intelligence, and they told me that this decision happened at a time of broad concern in the intelligence community about the president’s handling of intelligence, and it did not end with that Oval Office meeting.”

“In July 2017, you’ll remember Trump met with Putin at the G-20 in Hamburg, Germany,” Sciutto explained. “It was a private meeting and Trump took the interpreter’s notes afterwards — an unusual step. I’ve been told by an intelligence source that after that meeting as well, the intel community was concerned that the president had improperly discussed classified information.”

Watch below:

President Donald Trump reportedly was furious when news broke this week that his top intelligence officials – in open Senate testimony, aired live and uninterrupted on C-SPAN – all disputed his claims and rebuffed his policies on worldwide threats from North Korea, Iran, ISIS, and other bad actors.

They told the Senate that ISIS has not been defeated, despite the President’s claims to the contrary. They told the Senate that North Korea is still planning to make nuclear bombs and missiles that could destroy the U.S., despite the President’s claims to the contrary. And they told the Senate that Iran is not in violation of the joint agreement (JCPA, aka the Iran Deal), despite the President’s claims to the contrary.

Trump held a rare second “daily” Intelligence briefing Thursday afternoon. Rare because it was his second this week, and the second two days in a row, and rare because he only has about seven or eight a month nowadays.

The President has now assured Americans that he’s straightened them out – or, more specifically, they have straightened him out. Trump tweeted that they told him their live and uninterrupted Senate testimony was taken out of context, “mischaracterized” by the media. It was a “false narrative” and “distorted press.”

….I would suggest you read the COMPLETE testimony from Tuesday. A false narrative is so bad for our Country. I value our intelligence community. Happily, we had a very good meeting, and we are all on the same page!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 31, 2019

Of course, that’s totally false. They may have told him that, but they would have been lying.

Either Trump is, or his top intelligence officials are.

And either way, it’s the American people who are caught in the middle, and in harm’s way.

UPDATE: 5:07 PM ET –
Minutes after Trump’s tweets, C-SPAN posted these tweets, clearly in response:

WATCH: From yesterday, Senate Intelligence Committee on threats to the United States with @CIA Director Haspel, National Intelligence Director Coats and @FBI Director Wray here: https://t.co/wE118zV65l pic.twitter.com/5vW3NhbNX7

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 31, 2019

Donald Trump signed a proclamation halting asylum seekers ability to enter the United States between ports of entry for 90 days.

Speaking before leaving for France, the president said, “I just signed the proclamation on Asylum. Very important. People can come in but they have to come in through the ports of entry, and that to me is a very important thing.”

“Again, I reiterate, we need Democrat’s votes. They need to pass new immigration laws, because they’re flooding our country. We’re not letting them in, but they’re trying to flood our country. We need the wall, We’re building the wall, but we need it all built at one time and quickly. Its very important,” Trump added.

It is unclear what votes Donald Trump needs, given that he currently – until January – controls a majority in both the House and the Senate.

At current, there has been no actual construction on his long-desired “border wall.”

He continued, “we need democrats to support our new immigration laws to bring us up to date, the laws are obsolete and they’re incompetent. They’re the worst laws any country has anywhere in the world and it’s only because we don’t have the democrat’s votes so we need democrat votes so we can change immigration. We’ll have no trouble whatsoever at the border. We want people to come into our country, but they have to come into our country legally.”

The ACLU has headed to court against this proclamation.

“The president is simply trying to run roughshod over Congress’s decision to provide asylum to those in danger regardless of the manner of one’s entry,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU, told the Associated Press.

Those who do cross the border outside of a port of entry have, in the past, been arrested, but then released and monitored pending court hearings into the eligibility for asylum.

The “migrant caravan” Central America was a hot topic during the election, used to whip up anti-immigrant fervor during the election. Such discussion has slacked off post-election, and has people have seen that the caravan is not the threat it was made out to be.

The United States still has more than 5,600 active duty troops stationed at the border to somehow halt this supposed threat. The “caravan” is several hundred miles from the United States.

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Image via screen capture from video source.