During a 2016 intelligence briefing, then-candidate Donald Trump asked the USIC official giving him the briefing, “Joe, are the Russians bad?” when being informed about Russian intelligence operations in the US, according to documents obtained by Politico.

The newly-declassified documents review an August 17, 2016 briefing given to the republican nominee for President of the United States.  They were part of a document dump by the Trump administration to discredit Operations Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor, FBI investigations into Russian meddling in US elections and possible cooperation from the Trump campaign.

The officials briefed Trump, New Jersey Governor and Trump’s national security advisor Michael Flynn at the FBI field office in New York City.  It took approximately 13 minutes.

Supervisory Special Agent of the Foreign Intelligence Squad Joe Pientka led the briefing.

When Pientka informed Trump that Russia had many more intelligence officials in the United States than China, Trump asked “Joe, are the Russians bad?  Because they have more numbers, are they worse than the Chinese?”

Pientka responded that they were both bad and that the volume of operatives in the US was not “an indicator of the severity of the threat.”

After the briefers explained some of the cyberthreats impacting foreign intelligence work, Trump related his own experience in the field.

“Yes, I understand it’s a dark time.  Nothing is safe on computers anymore,” Trump related.  “We used to lock things up in a safe in a room, now anyone can get in.  My son is ten years old.  He has a computer, and we put a codeword on it.  Within ten minutes he broke the codeword and we had to put another one on the computer.  Kids are genius.”