President-elect Donald Trump is planning to overhaul the nation's top spy agencies amid his ongoing rejection of the intelligence community's assessment that Russia directed cyber attacks against U.S. political systems leading up to the 2016 election.
Trump intends to limit the power of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, which will include cuts to staff, officials familiar with the plans told the Wall Street Journal late Wednesday.
"The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world has become completely politicized," an unnamed individual close to the Trump transition said. "They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact."
Trump's spokesman, however, denied the report in a conference call with the press, according to Reuters.
"There is no truth to this idea of restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure," said Sean Spicer, Trump's incoming press secretary. "All transition activities are for information gathering purposes and all discussions are tentative."
The Wall Street Journal report comes as Trump continues to direct a barrage of public attacks against U.S. intelligence agencies, rejecting their unanimous conclusion that senior Russian officials led an operation to hack Democratic computer networks to affect the presidential election.
Trump on Wednesday cited denials by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that Moscow provided the site with hacked documents as further evidence the Kremlin was not involved in the election-related breaches.
"Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta'—why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!" the president-elect tweeted.
Trump has faced criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers for his embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Assange over U.S. intelligence officials. The Senate Armed Services Committee convened on Thursday the first congressional hearing regarding Russia's involvement in the hacking.
"You seem to have two choices now–some guy living in an embassy, on the run from the law for rape [allegations], who has a history of undermining American democracy and releasing classified information to put our troops at risk, or the 17 intelligence agencies sworn to defend us. I'm going with them," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.).
Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) told the Journal the dismantling of the ODNI, which was established in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, would put the U.S. homeland at greater risk.
Officials with Trump's transition team have pointed to the CIA's botched assessment concerning Iraq's weapons programs that led the U.S. to war in 2003. Trump's incoming national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, is helping to lead the revamp of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will join the heads of the CIA and FBI to brief Trump on Friday regarding their findings on the Russian hacking operation.
Trump on Wednesday tweeted the briefing had been postponed and suggested the delay was needed to "build a case" against Moscow. Intelligence officials rejected the claim.
UPDATE 12:20 P.M.: This post was updated to include comments from a Donald Trump spokesman, who denied reports that the president-elect is planning to restructure the intelligence community.