The media went on another of their patented Trump-is-Bad freakouts last week when it was announced that the president was replacing Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire with Richard Grenell. Reports had it that Trump was irate that the intelligence community briefed Congress on Russian interference in the 2020 election – particularly the idea that Moscow was backing the president for re-election. The narrative was that Trump would rather destroy the intelligence community than face the truth about Putin’s motives.
Well, as is usually the case with these wild reports, it turns out the media didn’t quite hit the mark. In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” this weekend, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said that if Russia is backing Trump for re-election, the intelligence had yet to come across his desk.
“From what I understand about the report….I get this second hand, but from Republican congressmen that were in the committee, there was no intelligence behind it,” O’Brien said. “I haven’t seen any intelligence to support the reports that were leaked out of the House. But it’s just hard to comment on that because, again, I wasn’t there. And these are leaks that were coming from a House Intel Committee hearing. I haven’t seen any intelligence that would back up what I’m reading in the papers.”
So in that case, we’ve got a couple of possibilities: One, rogue intelligence briefers are giving shady information to the House Intelligence Committee, or they are at least exaggerating what they know about Russia’s actions. Or two, Rep. Adam Schiff went to the media with a biased, reaching account of what he heard in the briefing that bore little resemblance to what was actually said.
We won’t speculate on where the actual truth lies, but we will say that it wouldn’t be the first time Schiff has been caught lying his pants off about Trump/Russia conspiracy theories.
“Another misinformation campaign is being launched by Democrats in Congress saying that Russia prefers me to any of the Do Nothing Democrat candidates who still have been unable to, after two weeks, count their votes in Iowa,” Trump tweeted on Friday.
But even if Maguire and election security expert Shelby Pierson gave the House Intelligence Committee a fair, straightforward, by-the-books presentation, questions still linger. Chief among them: Why did they go to Schiff and the lawmakers before briefing President Trump about the presentation? No matter what they did or didn’t share with Congress last week, the fact that they intentionally kept Trump out of the loop is reason enough for their dismissal.
The intelligence community has been thwarting and fighting this president from before the day he ever took office. Trump’s done a good job clearing the Deep State of many of its worst actors, but last week’s events prove that there is still much work to be done.
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