Keyword: brianhook
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Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has become the latest ex-official from President Trump’s first term to lose their security detail, according to a report. The Pentagon revoked Esper’s taxpayer-funded security detail on Tuesday night, CBS News reported on Wednesday. Esper’s security detail had been provided by the Department of Defense as a result of threats he’s received from Iran since the 2020 US airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment. Esper, 60, served as Trump’s secretary of the Army from November 2017 to July 2019, before he...
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President Trump revoked security protection for his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and a former top aide, Brian Hook, despite warnings from the Biden administration that both men faced ongoing threats from Iran because of actions they took on Mr. Trump’s behalf, four people with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday. Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Hook had been part of an aggressive posture against Iran during the first Trump presidency, most notably the drone strike that killed the powerful Iranian general Qassim Suleimani in early 2020. Mr. Trump also remains under threat because of that action, and his...
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has revoked security protection for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former aide Brian Hook, both of whom served in his first administration, the New York Times reported on Thursday.Representatives for the White House could not be immediately reached for comment on the report, which citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Trump on Tuesday said he had withdrawn protection for his former national security adviser, John Bolton.
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US President Donald Trump is in the process of firing thousands of White House staff who are not aligned with his vision to Make America Great Again. Taking to his social media platform, Truth Social, the newly appointed president publicly fired several senior workers in an unprecedented shake-up. The post read: 'Our first day in the White House is not over yet! My Presidential Personnel Office is actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again. 'Let this serve as...
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Brian Hook, Donald Trump’s special envoy for Iran during the president-elect’s first term in office, said Thursday that his former boss has “no interest in regime change” in Tehran but does seek to isolate and weaken the Islamic Republic, and that the administration’s “deal of the century” peace plan for Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians will likely be back on the table once Trump returns to the White House in January. Without asserting any insider knowledge, the former State Department official said that the incoming commander-in-chief’s foreign policy intentions are “hidden in plain sight,” pointing to Trump’s decisions during the...
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The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is seeking Majid Dastjani Farahani, a 41-year-old Iranian national and intelligence agent, accused of orchestrating assassination plots against US officials. "Majid Dastjani Farahani, an Iranian intelligence officer, is wanted for questioning in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations in the United States, to include lethal targeting of current and former United States Government officials as revenge for the killing of IRGC-QF Commander Qasem Soleimani," it said in a report on March 5. Soleimani was killed in 2020 in Baghdad by an American airstrike. He was commander of the Islamic Revolutionary...
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The Biden administration suppressed information about Iran’s efforts to assassinate U.S. officials to ensure Congress and the American public were kept in the dark, according to a lawmaker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "What Americans don’t know is that the Biden administration has gone to great lengths to hide the extent and persistence of those threats" from Iran, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said during a Senate hearing Wednesday on Tehran’s network of terror proxies. Those threats include active plots to assassinate former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and other top U.S. officials. The administration has been "abusing the...
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EXCLUSIVE: The influential House Committee of Education and the Workforce on Thursday launched an investigation into the role of a former Iranian official, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, at Princeton University. It is claimed that he is suspected of advancing the interests of Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism. Twelve Republican committee members sent a letter to Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber with detailed questions about the influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran via Mousavian’s activities on the campus of the New Jersey-based Ivy League institution. Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who along with Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., spearheaded the letter to...
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University Middle East expert Hussein Mousavian was a former Iranian official A former Iranian official who is a faculty member at Princeton University recently bragged in an interview about how his hardline government’s death threats against a former top Trump administration official had him and his family "trembling" with fear. Hussein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, said in a recent interview that the Iranian regime’s threats to murder Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Iran, have heavily impacted Hook’s family...
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An excerpt from senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner’s new book, ‘Breaking History: A White House Memoir On February 23, I departed for the Middle East, along with Avi Berkowitz, Jason Greenblatt, and Brian Hook. The trip included our first visit to the Sultanate of Oman. Strategically located along the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Oman shares a border with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Yemen. Across the Strait of Hormuz is Iran, a mere twenty-one miles away. Upon arriving in the afternoon, we headed to the hotel and waited for a call from the palace with instructions on what time...
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The State Department inspector general whose recent dismissal ignited a political firestorm sent copies detailing a sensitive investigation to his personal email account, according to a probe into his conduct run by the Defense Department's inspector general. The inquiry report, dated March 17, confirms that fired State Department inspector general Steve Linick was the subject of a broad investigation related to the leaks of politically charged materials to journalists, specifically a draft evaluation report into Brian Hook, the State Department’s top Iran official. The report, which was provided to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, concluded that while Linick was permitted...
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Iran has released U.S. Navy veteran Michael White, who had been detained for nearly two years, his family confirmed Thursday. “I am blessed to announce that the nightmare is over, and my son is safely in American custody and on his way home,” White’s mother, Joanne White, said in a statement shared by a family spokesman on Twitter. Joanne White thanked the State Department, Swiss diplomats and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) in her statement. U.S. special envoy for Iran Brian Hook flew to Zurich with a doctor to meet...
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Washington (CNN)On the same night the US killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, the US unsuccessfully targeted another senior Iranian military official in Yemen, according to a US official with knowledge of the events and another source familiar. The sources would not give any details about the mission or how the US had attempted to carry it out. The US official said to the best of their knowledge there is no broader operation to decapitate the IRGC-Quds force leadership at this time. The Washington Post was first to report the operation took place. According to the Post, the Iranian target was...
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White House senior adviser Jared Kushner will lead a US delegation to Israel at the end of the month to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz, a senior administration official said on Thursday. Kushner has been leading President Donald Trump's effort to develop a peace plan for Israelis and Palestinians. After proposing a $60 billion aid package for the region last summer, he has yet to unveil a proposed political plan that gets at the thorniest issues in the decades-old conflict, with Netanyahu struggling to form a governing coalition. The official, speaking on condition...
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It was mid-May, about six weeks after Trump appointee Mari Stull began her new job as senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. As senior adviser at the bureau, Stull was in charge of making sure President Trump’s agenda was represented at the many international organizations the U.S. participates in and mostly funds, such as the United Nations and its various agencies. Stull and her boss, Amb. Kevin Moley, had just left for a trip to Geneva for the World Health Assembly. Back at the State Department, Erin Barclay, a senior career diplomat at the IO...
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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said on Sunday that a new Iran Action Group in the U.S. State Department aimed to overthrow the Islamic Republic, but would fail. He was speaking on the 65th anniversary of a U.S.-backed coup that overthrew a democratically elected Iranian prime minister, an occasion when anti-American sentiment runs particularly high in the Islamic Republic. Comparing fresh U.S. sanctions on Tehran imposed by President Donald Trump with the 1953 coup that ousted nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, Zarif said Tehran will not let history repeat itself. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday...
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Trump transition team official and Breitbart News contributor Robert Wasinger had some harsh words for certain Trump administration officials on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday. Talking with Breitbart News Washington Political Editor Matt Boyle and Deputy Political Editor Amanda House, Wasinger continued his campaign against the establishment and NeverTrump elements he sees as locking out actual Trump supporters who worked to get Donald Trump elected president from getting jobs in the administration. LISTEN: Wasinger, who helped craft the transition, especially in the State Department, has been frustrated by the lack of progress in staffing the administration, particularly in so-called “Schedule C”...
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Brian Hook, a noted Trump critic during the presidential election, is a key figure in a State Department containing many unfilled positions. Hook is the State Department’s director of policy planning, and a Politico report Sunday citing several officials said that Hook has an inordinate amount of power in shaping American foreign policy. A State Department official confirmed this description of Hook to The Daily Caller. The position of director of policy planning is usually an important one and serves as a think tank of sorts for the department. However, with many unfilled roles at the State Department, Hook has...
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