New in SpyWeek: Trump's Intel Revenge Tour
The president ousts career officials, empties NSC, removes security for Iran assassination targets, bestows security clearances for aides—but Tulsi?
TRUMP TO BOLTON, DROP DEAD: Trump took some huge gambles with national security and possibly risked people’s lives this week as he returned to the Oval Office and immediately launched a long-promised campaign of “retribution” for his political enemies.
Perhaps most alarmingly, Trump took away Secret Service protection for his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, his former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a former top Iran adviser, Brian Hook. Trump is mad at these three for various reasons, but that doesn’t justify turning them into juicy targets for foreign assassins. Pompeo and Bolton have been the subject of assassination plots by Iran, which wants retribution of its own for the killing of Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike in 2020. (An IRGC member was charged in federal court in a murder-for-hire plot to kill Bolton.) The threat from Iran hasn’t gone away. “Pray it won’t happen, but what if one of them now gets attacked?” the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked. Editors of The Free Press observed that “a country that sees its adversaries plotting violence against top officials and effectively says, ‘Go right ahead,’ is a country encouraging more violence on our own soil.”
Trump also took a swipe at the former senior intelligence officials who signed a much-criticized letter warning that reports of emails found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop weeks before the 2020 election had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Trump’s executive order accuses all 49 surviving signatories of the letter of “election interference,” potentially a serious crime. The list includes former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, three former CIA directors—Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, and John Brennan—and two deputy directors, Michael Morrell and John McLaughlin. As we’ve reported, some signatories of the letter have also been worried about their personal safety. There have been calls on social media for violent harassment of what the right has dubbed “Spies who Lie.” MAGA provocateur Ivan Raiklin tweeted that “Live-Streamed Swatting Raids is the minimum that must be done day one.”
EMPTY CHAIRS AT NSC: President Trump is demanding federal workers report to their offices. Meanwhile, his national security advisor is sending people home.
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