UPDATE: Controversial Intelligence Pick Dropped
Retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis had been slated as a top deputy to Tulsi Gabbard at ODNI
The Trump administration has reportedly pulled Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s pick of a retired Army officer to be one of her top deputies after an outcry from Congress and Jewish groups over the officer’s harsh criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, particularly over support for Israel, but also Ukraine.
On Wednesday morning the Anti-Defamation League condemned the selection of retired Army Lt. Col. on X, calling him “extremely dangerous” and “unfit for this key security role.” Late Wednesday, after the Jewish Insider magazine and later SpyTalk published stories about Gabbard’s choice to be deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, New York Times intelligence reporter Julian Barnes posted on X : “Senior Administration confirms that Davis is pulled and won’t take senior intel post.” Gabbard’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The abrupt rise and fall of Davis from one of the most influential intelligence positions in the government shows that political blowbacks can still matter even in Donald Trump’s Washington. Davis had won decorations for his performances in Operation Desert Storm and the Afghanistan War and earned praise as a courageous whistleblower for disputing bloated claims of progress by the U.S. command in Kabul. But his blunt criticisms of mainstream U.S. foreign policy as a podcaster and rightwing media guest drew attention when word spread that Gabbard wanted him to be one of her senior deputies.
Two intelligence community sources late last week told SpyTalk they were stunned to learn that Davis, a senior fellow with Defense Priorities, the Koch-funded think tank that advocates a diminished U.S. presence overseas, was Gabbard’s pick to serve in a position that would put him in charge of intelligence briefings for President Trump.
In recent social media posts and podcast appearances, for example, Davis has dismissed Iran as a threat to U.S. interests, condemned Israel’s “genocidal” assaults on Gaza and indulged in an outlandish conspiracy theory about the Ukrainian government supposedly funnelling U.S. weapons to Mexican drug cartels.
“It seems like a pretty bizarre pick,” the official said about the prospect of Davis’s selection to the deputy DNI post. “It certainly speaks to a deep distrust of the professional staff” of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The official noted that the job Davis is slated for is “is one of the most powerful positions in the intelligence community,” given that it s responsible for, among other duties, preparing the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB, that is provided to the Oval Office each morning, thereby determining what intelligence Trump sees (or does not see) and potentially shaping responses to international crises. Indeed, some intelligence officials believe that Davis, by virtue of the position, could end up becoming the personal intelligence briefer to Trump.
Resistance
But Davis faced strong blowback from Republican national security hawks in Congress, one source cautioned. The brewing internal debate over his appointment mirrored larger tensions within the Trump administration between traditional national security hardliners and the America First neo-isolationists, a camp with which Davis is associated.
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was among those who have raised objections to Davis, especially over his criticism of Israel, one of the sources said. But when Senate intelligence committee staffers expressed the chairman’s concerns to the ODNI, they were told that Gabbard wanted him and when Gabbard makes a decision, “she sticks by it,” said the source. The source, a former senior U.S. intelligence official, noted that Davis would be vetted for a security clearance that could delay any announcement of his selection (a point that became moot later Wednesday). Still, the former official said of the prospect of Davis serving as deputy DNI: “This is horrifying.” (Cotton’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)
While it is not clear how Davis came to the attention of Gabbard and other senior Trump administration officials, a review of his podcast—called “Daniel Davis Deep Dive”—and social media postings show he has has expressed views and cultivated relationships that sit well with some of the president’s top advisers, including Vice President JD Vance, who are skeptical of greater U.S. engagement overseas, particularly Ukraine..
In a recent appearance on podcaster Tucker Carlson’s show, Davis derided U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia as pointless, saying the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “drunk with power.”
When Carlson volunteered that he knew for a “fact” that Ukraine was selling U.S. military equipment to Mexican drug cartels and the CIA was profiting from the transactions — a conspiracy theory for which top U.S. defense officials say there is no evidence — Davis jumped in and agreed with his host “100 percent,” adding: “This has been an open secret for almost the duration of this.”
In another provocative post on X, Davis attacked Israel for its “genocidal” actions and criticized Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for his “unAmerican” claims that anti-Semitism was behind college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, suggesting the Texas senator was only saying so to protect the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Cruz had said in a video to which Davis was responding that colleges that failed to crackdown on disruptive anti-Israel demonstrations should have their federal funding cut off—an action since taken by the Trump administration.
“Where is ur moral outrage at the Israeli gov that continues to kill kids and other civilians without remorse or military necessity?” Davis wrote in remarks that tagged Cruz. “Where is even a tiny bit of concern for the Palestinian ‘Christians’ who are also killed in Gaza and the West Bank?”
(On Wednesday morning, the Anti-Defamation League condemned Davis’s selection on X, calling him “extremely dangerous” and “unfit for this key security role.”)
While voicing repeated hostility to Israel, Davis also has shown sympathy for the Jewish state’s main adversary, Iran, describing the country as a “marginal regional power” that is not a threat to the United States. “Let’s quit lying to ourselves: the West does not want peace w Iran, we want to destroy it,” he wrote on X last October. “So these claims we want to prevent a nuke Iran are lies. We want war.”
“It seems like a pretty bizarre pick,” the official said about the prospect of Davis’s selection to the deputy DNI post. “It certainly speaks to a deep distrust of the professional staff” of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
A career military officer who earned two Bronze Stars (in Operation Desert Storm and in Afghanistan), Davis briefly came to public attention in 2012 when he issued a blistering critique of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, filing classified and unclassified reports with the Defense Department inspector general’s office asserting that senior military officers, including Gen. David Petraeus, had been misleading the public about U.S. progress in the conflict. The New York Times praised him for what it described as “an unusual one man campaign of military truth telling.”
“How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?“ Davis wrote in an article for The Armed Services Journal entitled “Truth, Lies and Afghanistan: How Military Leaders Have Let Us Down.”
In more recent years, Davis signed on as a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank founded by Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul and funded by energy magnate Charles Koch and his late brother David Koch. On its website, the group defines its mission as informing policymakers how American military power must be “used more judiciously to protect America’s narrowly defined interests.”
But Davis has gained more attention for his podcast where he frequently has featured guests with fringe views about national security policies often tinged with conspiracy theories. Among recent guests: George Galloway, a stridently anti-American British socialist who had praised Saddam Hussein and, channeling Vladimir Putin, once told the Guardian that “the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.” Another Davis guest: Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department analyst who once spread bogus claims about Michelle Obama using racial slurs against white people and that British signals intelligence had wiretapped Donald Trump in 2016 on behalf of then-President Barack Obama. Another frequent guest has been political scientist John Mearsheimer, who has decried the power of “the Israel lobby” over U.S. foreign policy.
The overall impression I'm left with after reading this article is that the core 'concern' seems to be non-conformity with the current trend to provide unconditional, unwavering and absolute support to Israel and its narratives.
Davis sounds like someone who doesn't toe the establishment line [Ukraine etc] but you mention his campaign against false claims of progress by Gen Petraeus, for example. Eventually, those claims were indeed tall and misleading, leading to the inglorious drawdown of America from Afghanistan.
As intelligence analysts, we can unconsciously band together on status quo narratives. Granted, from a moral and principled perspective, Davis' disdain for Ukraine is troubling and his relations with George Galloway, Tucker Carlson et al raises some questions. But then, everything always returns to his perceived over-criticism of Israel.
If the sources seem deeply fixated on this particular 'oddity', they're part of the problem. It seems concerns over contrarian views on Ukraine etc are minor distractions.
This guy sounds like his beef with Zelenskyy is that he is Jewish and I am not surprised that the ADL finally has a beef with an antisemite, because he is critical of Israel. The fact that Trump is surrounded by and embraces Nazis does not seem to warrant the ADLs public disapproval.