Trump Receives First 'Presidential Daily Brief'

ABC News(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump and his Vice President-elect Mike Pence are receiving their first highly sensitive presidential daily brief Tuesday since their victory last week, multiple sources familiar with the presidential transition tell ABC News.

As of 1 p.m. Tuesday, the top-secret intelligence briefing was underway and being presented to Trump and Pence inside the Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York by career intelligence analysts.

The PDB — as it’s commonly known — will be identical to the one President Obama presumably received Tuesday morning and will be available to Trump every day until he moves into the White House in January. Once in office, Trump is likely to receive the brief as his morning ritual like presidents before him.

“This is an important part in ensuring the kind of smooth transition that President Obama has prioritized,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said last week, when Trump first became eligible to receive them. Earnest noted that this was a courtesy President George W. Bush extended to Obama as well.

Intelligence officials say the sitting president determines what the president-elect will receive, and Obama has decided to grant access to the PDB, which means Trump can, at his discretion, receive the exact same thing Obama receives each morning — as is custom with recent transitions.

Although Trump has already had access to a small number of intelligence briefings by virtue of being the Republican presidential nominee, PDBs are much more specific. Updated daily, the PDB contains a region-by-region breakdown of the most urgent national security issues and can contain the most sensitive up-to-date secret information and analysis obtained by the U.S. intelligence community.

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