Posted on 01/11/2025 5:12:55 AM PST by MtnClimber
Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to make war against the deep state. Now it seems the first battle may take place on home ground: the White House.
Congressional and intelligence sources tell Tablet that the candidate slotted in for the top intelligence spot on the National Security Council is ill suited to serve the president’s agenda. Adam Howard, reportedly the front-runner for the NSC’s senior director for intelligence, is currently staff director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Republican Congressman Mike Turner. According to several current congressional sources, multiple House members have raised concern over an alleged boast made by Turner on Capitol Hill that he’s “taking over Trump’s IC [Intelligence Community].” Presumably, Howard is meant to be his instrument.
On Sunday, Joshua Steinman, an NSC official from the first Trump administration, posted a long thread on X reporting that the current NSC is being staffed with holdovers from the Joe Biden administration and others unlikely to serve Trump’s agenda, including Howard, whose intelligence experience is limited to the two years he’s served as HPSCI staff director. Biden’s senior director for intelligence is Maher Bitar, an anti-Israel activist once affiliated with the Students for Justice in Palestine. Bitar also came from HPSCI, where he worked under then-Congressman now-Sen. Adam Schiff, one of Trump’s most vocal opponents on Capitol Hill.
“Without an operational intelligence background, you can’t clean up the mess made by the current [Biden] team,” wrote Steinman.
The NSC’s senior director for intelligence is the president’s interlocutor with the 18 intelligence agencies that make up the IC and ensures that the president’s initiatives are being fulfilled. The senior director administrates all covert action programs on behalf of the president and controls all classified information flow to and from the White House, most significantly the Presidential Daily Brief. He also has IC-wide oversight responsibility.
And yet, say congressional sources, Turner and his deputy Howard have over the past year neglected their constitutionally mandated oversight duties and instead covered for the IC. The sources say that they have impeded efforts to investigate anything that might have embarrassed Biden administration intelligence officials. When reached by Tablet, an HPSCI spokesman declined to comment for the record.
“[Is Howard] willing to expose IC dirty tricks targeting the President?” Steinman asked in his X thread. He was not outlining a hypothetical but rather referring to the NSC’s work in the first Trump White House uncovering the surveillance of the president and his aides. After the 2016 election, NSC staffers found that Obama officials had unmasked the names of transition team officials in transcripts of foreign intelligence intercepts, most notably Gen. Michael Flynn. Trump’s onetime national security adviser was unmasked by at least 40 Obama officials—including now President Joe Biden.
The unlawful leak to the media of Flynn’s phone conversation with Russia’s U.S. ambassador led first to the combat veteran’s departure from the White House and subsequently the special counsel investigation that hobbled the first half of Trump’s first term in office. NSC holdovers from the Obama administration bogged down the Trump team and one holdover, CIA official Eric Ciaramella, teed up the first impeachment of Trump.
Turner in fact was excellent during the impeachment process, using the televised hearings to defend the president and break down Schiff’s anti-Trump witnesses. After Turner took over the committee, he was reportedly keen to reset relations with Schiff and the Democrats and move toward bipartisanship. The problem is that it’s hard to have comity with a faction led by an ambitious activist like Schiff who saw the committee as a political weapon to target opponents.
There’s a lot riding on the current NSC starting off on the strongest possible footing and with an eye to defending a commander in chief certain to be in the deep state’s crosshairs. Steinman concluded his thread with the observation that if the new intel director “isn’t 100% on board with the Trump Agenda, we are in for trouble.”
The day after Steinman’s post, incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz wrote on Twitter, apparently responding to Steinman’s allegations, that “anyone working under President Trump in the NSC will be fully aligned with his America First agenda. Any rumors or suggestions to the contrary are fake news and a distraction from the mission. We will clear the decks to Make America Great Again.”
Waltz, a retired colonel in the National Guard and a combat-decorated Green Beret, served on the House Intelligence Committee and is perfectly aligned with Trump’s priorities on the threats facing America—China, Russia, and Iran. He wrote to Tablet: “I will not be bringing any personnel—political appointees or detailees—who are not in line with the President’s agenda. Additionally, detailees will be dismissed on day one pending an assessment of President Trump and the NSC’s priorities.”
Steinman isn’t the only one who thinks Adam Howard doesn’t fit the bill.
After HPSCI finished its report on cases of sexual assault at the CIA, it was released only after victims complained. The victims have continued to raise concerns that the CIA has not been held accountable, and the House report seemingly praised CIA leadership and allocated more resources to the Agency to stop employees from sexually assaulting their colleagues. The report reasoned that the CIA was “unable to appropriately address the challenges due to its lack of certain tools and authorities. The Committee sought to provide CIA with what it needs to fix these gaps in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024.”
According to Senate sources, with the 2024 Intelligence Authorization Act, Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans were keen to cut all funding for DEI programs across the IC and limit DEI management positions, and successfully did so in their version of the bill. But since Turner and his staff were willing to satisfy the Biden administration’s requests, the disparity weakened the GOP Senate’s provisions and the final bill.
Perhaps most oddly, Turner and Howard spooked the country with a vague warning of a security threat to prevent consideration of reforms to 702, the authority for the warrantless bulk data collection of American communications. When 702 was up for reauthorization in spring 2024, House Speaker Mike Johnson wanted to give the Judiciary Committee the opportunity to make amendments protecting U.S. privacy rights. But Turner moved to block the bill from coming to the floor with an amendment process.
The HPSCI chair took the unusual step of publicly announcing that he had made available to House members classified information regarding a “serious national security threat” and called on President Biden to declassify all information related to it. Although Turner didn’t specify the threat at the time, it turned out to be a Russian space-based military capability—a serious threat, but not as urgent as Turner had made it seem. Lawmakers had been in possession of the intelligence for weeks prior to Turner’s announcement.
The point was that the information about the Russian space weapon was reportedly collected via 702. Turner’s announcement was meant to show that the controversial surveillance program was an indispensable tool and anyone who moved to reform it was playing fast and loose with national security and exposing Americans to danger.
Under Turner’s leadership, in other words, HPSCI has been making the IC’s case. But defending the interests of a cadre that’s abused its power by spying on Americans, including the president-elect, is the opposite of what Donald Trump had in mind when he swore he’d clean out the deep state.
When contacted by Tablet, Steinman said: “President Trump has the greatest instincts in a leader I have ever seen. And he deserves a team that executes his vision with the tenacity and vigor befitting the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.”
I wonder how many honest people there are in Washington D.C.
Sounds like a mess. And Trump knows about the mess.
Watch what happens in 10 days.
WHY do public officials have this crying need to spew government business all over social media???
BTTT
As General Spaatz once said: there are 4 kinds of people: me firsters, me tooers, deadwood, and the dedicated. Near as I can tell it’s all the first three categories. There is a small handful of the dedicated, but they are really small. And he also said that mefirsters - who are really smart, generally - have a nasty trick of appearing to be dedicated when they are just nothing but mefirsters.
The corruption is beyond ANYTHING any of us can imagine!
Gods speed cleaning up some of this mess PDJT!!!!
With a few exceptions the NSC staff is borrowed from the agencies. Just send them all back and clear the place out. The “interagency” is a bizarre mess anyway. There is nothing more bizarre and headache inducing than seeing and NSC meeting up close and personal. You just want to call in an airstrike on your own position and end it all.
If Trump can’t do anything about this guy in this position then he should take his daily briefs and then go around him and bring in all the heads whose output goes into the daily brief and grill them as a regular thing and make sure that everyone understands that the first time any political gamesmanship is detected the charge will be called treason. “Intelligence” is nothing to play with. It’s dead serious.
“I wonder how many honest people there are in Washington D.C.”
Wasn’t this the question Abraham and God debated about the city of Sodom in the Genesis 18.23-33? At the end of the conversation God promised Abraham, ““For the sake of ten [righteous people] I will not destroy it.” His angels then went on to Sodom, told Abraham’s relative Lot to flee with his family, and then the city was destroyed.
The second thing was, as Archie Bunker would say: "Lot's wife was turned into a pillow of salt."
https://brownstone.org/articles/congress-shield-against-trumps-hammer-of-justice/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
“Somewhere amid the 1,500+ pages of legislative clutter in the latest Continuing Resolution—the bill apparently killed by public exposure alone—lies a provision so audacious, so shameless, I can only assume it was drafted by a cabal of Congressional career criminals. Section 605—a sterile title masking its true intent—amounts to nothing less than a legislative fortress erected to shield Congress from the Justice Department, the FBI, and, most troubling of all, accountability.”
Mike Turner is my Congressional Representative, he has been there forever and is a big advocate for sending money to Ukraine. Mike Turner was a big supporter of John Boehner and naturally Paul Ryan. Mike Turner has been tied to the intelligence community for years. He like most establishment Ohio Republicans is a “principled Republican” who opposes President Trump, he has been smarter than most as he hasn’t come right out and said anything. He did an interview on the old Tucker Carlson show where Tucker asked him why he was more concerned about protecting Ukraine’s border than our own especially when there was fentanyl coming across our border killing his constituents in small town Ohio. Mike Turner didn’t answer the question but went on about how important it was to fulfill our international obligations. Mike Turner would most definitely undermine or sabotage President Trump in order to secure the deep state agenda.
Walz, Gabbart, Radcliffe, and others are going to be very busy.
It doesn’t take an expert in intelligence to fire everyone currently working in that department. Someone maybe under the impression that Trump’s choice is to lead the department when maybe, just maybe the real task is a clean sweep. 🤔
The Me Me games have started
For those unfamiliar with a profit make organization, sometimes it time to clear the boards and close it down. Owners hire experts to come in for that task. Welcome to the brave new management style boys and girls….
“Mike Turner is my Congressional Representative, he has been there forever and is a big advocate for sending money to Ukraine.”
Trump, for sure, won’t believe a damn thing Turner says regarding Ukraine, as Trump now understands the war and its causes - so Turner’s background will make him an NPC, at least on Ukraine.
It’s not like the good guys and the bad guys each wear uniforms (not talking about military uniforms).
It’s going to take some time to sort everyone out.
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