“I think it is deeply misguided for anybody at any level to question the integrity and motives of the patriots who serve in our intelligence community,” Josh Earnest said. | Getty Josh Earnest: 'Deeply misguided' to question motives of intel community

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that it is “deeply misguided” for anyone to question the motives of the U.S. intelligence community, a veiled rebuke of President-elect Donald Trump who hours earlier seemingly blamed it for the release of explosive but unverified intelligence connecting his campaign to the Russian government.

“I think it is deeply misguided for anybody at any level to question the integrity and motives of the patriots who serve in our intelligence community,” Earnest said at his daily press briefing on Wednesday. “It doesn’t mean they’re always right, but questioning their motives is another thing all together.”


Earnest’s remarks from the White House podium came in response to a question about Trump, who at his own press conference on Wednesday said that it would be a “tremendous blot” on the reputation of the intelligence community if it was responsible for the release of an uncorroborated report published Tuesday by BuzzFeed. He later said it was "disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out."

That report published by BuzzFeed alleges ties between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government and also that the Kremlin possesses salacious personal information about the president-elect. In a flurry of posts to Twitter Wednesday morning, Trump made even more clear that he believed the intelligence community had released the dossier to BuzzFeed and others, writing that “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

Asked about that comparison at his press conference, Trump said “I think it's a disgrace, and I say that, and I say that, and that's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do.”

Earnest took issue with the comparison of the intelligence community to Nazi Germany, listing off the long histories of public service of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan and NSA Director Mike Rogers. All four, as well as thousands of intelligence community employees who work beneath them, have served presidents of both parties.

“They do their important work not because the paycheck is large. Many of them are experts who could command a much higher salary in the private sector. They aren’t engaged in this work because they’re going to get a lot of personal glory and credit for their service,” Earnest said. “They made a decision when they began their career to set aside their own personal and ideological views and focus solely on the facts and focus solely on marshaling and presenting the most insightful analysis and the most accurate, relevant, timely facts to the president and other national security decision makers so that they can make the best decisions about what’s necessary to protect the country.”