SpyWeek: How Trump Shanked Elections Fraud, the Bipartisan Rush on Clayton, Rubio’s Global Terrorism Stunt, and More
Also: Pulte lobbied to name and smear CIA officials, DOJ activated long dormant secretive terrorism court, a high level real life spy yarn
Trump Enlists Spy Agencies in Elections Denialism: “With like-minded allies now positioned in key roles throughout the government, Mr. Trump has trained the full arsenal of the federal government on one of his most persistent obsessions: sowing doubt about the security of the country’s election systems,” the New York Times reported Friday. “Major agencies such as the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the Homeland Security Department and the U.S. Postal Service have taken steps to revive his false claims about the 2020 election and try to assert federal control over state-run elections.” It added, “His efforts got additional reinforcements on Thursday from the country’s intelligence agencies, which provided the White House with a trove of declassified evidence that Mr. Trump held up as evidence of a broken election system.”
Pultergeist: President Trump’s badly received elections-fraud speech Thursday night nearly went way off the rails and put CIA officers in danger because of aggressive kibitzing by Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, according to a new report. Pulte, concurrently the MAGA federal housing official known for finding original ways to investigate Democrats as well as DNI, “had in the days leading up the speech pushed to reveal the names of intelligence officials accused of concealing election interference from Trump, according to two senior officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations,” Politico’s Dasha Burns reported on Saturday. “That set off a scramble inside the White House with senior officials, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, fearing that it could undermine the president’s broader point about election vulnerabilities and put intelligence analysts’ lives at risk, the two officials said.”
Declass Goof: There were a few genuine nuggets on Chinese espionage in Trump’s massive declassification of intelligence reports, SpyTalk’s Michael Isikoff reported on Friday, but there were also some that underscored the case—vehemently denied by Trump—that Russia strived to help him win the 2020 election. “President Putin and senior Russian officials are overseeing efforts by proxies to spread claims about former Vice President Biden as well as Ukrainian politicians and alleged Ukrainian influence in the 2016 US election,” a Sept. 10, 2020 U.S. intelligence report assessed. “These claims include that when the former Vice President was in office, he engaged in criminal activity in his dealings with Ukraine and individuals tied to Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.” It further said Russian agents Andrii Derkach and Konstantin Kilimnik were “conspiring to intensify their efforts as the election approaches to orchestrate a high-profile corruption scandal implicating former Vice President Biden and the Democratic Party at the peak of the 2020 US presidential campaign. Their aim is to defeat the former Vice President and ensure the President’s victory.” Portions of the document were gleefully posted by Hunter Biden, among others Trump opponents.
Docs Danger: Trump’s massive dump of sensitive intelligence reports was not only unprecedented but dangerous, former senior CIA officer Julia Curlee told Massimo Calabresi in the New York Times.
