https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-analyst-trump-locking-down-intelligence-community-1451620 Mary Anne Marsh, a political analyst for Fox News, raised concerns on Monday that President Donald Trump appeared to be consolidating his control over the U.S. intelligence community with the nomination of GOP Representative John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence. "It's more about protecting Trump than America," Marsh, who previously served as a senior adviser to Democratic Senator John Kerry, warned during a segment of Fox News' America's Newsroom on Monday. "John Ratcliffe has been all over the investigate the investigators [probe], who's doing that right now? [Attorney General] Bill Barr, so Donald Trump has consolidated his control over the intelligence committees at a time when he's given Barr unprecedented access and control over all the intelligence information, which we've never seen by an attorney general before," she said. "Now he adds Ratcliffe," the analyst asserted. "So this is Trump locking down the intelligence community for his purposes, not national security purposes." Trump reportedly long aimed to replace Coats, a Republican, as he did not see him as loyal enough to his administration. On Sunday, the president announced that Coats would be leaving office on August 15 and that he had nominated Ratcliffe, who represents Texas, as his replacement. "I am pleased to announce that highly respected Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas will be nominated by me to be the Director of National Intelligence. A former U.S. Attorney, John will lead and inspire greatness for the Country he loves," the president wrote in a tweet. Republican Senator Richard Burr, who represents North Carolina and is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested in a Monday statement that Ratcliffe's nomination would quickly be approved by his committee. "When the White House submits its official nomination to the Senate Intelligence Committee, we will work to move it swiftly through regular order," Burr said, NPR reported. Some experts have raised concerns about Ratcliffe's lack of experience when it comes to national intelligence. "Ratcliffe would be the first DNI without significant intelligence or ambassadorial experience," John McLaughlin, a former Deputy Director of the CIA, pointed out on Twitter. "Dan Coats has done superbly the main thing a DNI must do: present the collective view of the intelligence community in a fair, objective, and non-partisan way." As Marsh explained, Ratcliffe has been a staunch supporter of the president, particularly in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference and its alleged involvement with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. "So Americans need to know this, as they listen to the Democrats and socialists on the other side of the aisle, as they do dramatic readings from this report: that Volume 2 of this report was not authorized under the law to be written. It was written to a legal standard that does not exist at the Justice Department," he argued during Mueller's testimony to the House Judiciary and House Intelligence Committees last week. "And it was written in violation of every DOJ [Department of Justice] principle about extra-prosecutorial commentary," the congressman said. As Democratic lawmakers continue to investigate allegations against Trump and his administration, as well as push for legislation to challenge Russian election interference, Ratcliffe would serve in a prominent role that he could potentially use to shield the president.
Trump's intelligence chief resigned after the White House repeatedly suppressed his warnings about Russian interference, New York Times reports https://www.businessinsider.com/dni-dan-coats-quit-white-house-suppressed-russia-warnings-nyt-2019-7 Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats in recent months saw his warnings about threats posed by Russia watered down by the White House, The New York Times reported Sunday. According to The Times, a dossier by Coats on Russian interference in the 2018 midterms was altered by the White House to contain less critical language. Coats' resignation was announced Sunday in a tweet by President Donald Trump, who wants a loyalist, Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, to replace him. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats repeatedly found his warnings about the threat posed by Russia suppressed by the White House, The New York Times reported Sunday amid his resignation from the post. According to The Times, Coats has often found himself at odds with President Donald Trump over Russia, a situation that worsened in recent months. Coats saw Russia as an adversary to the US, The Times wrote, and pushed for closer cooperation with European countries to counter it, but the White House did not agree. Several times Coats saw his language on the Kremlin's activities watered down by the White House, according to The Times. A secret report by Coats on Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2018 midterms by spreading disinformation was reportedly altered by the White House. A public statement on Coats' conclusions contained less critical language than the original, The Times said. A former senior intelligence official told The Washington Post that Coats felt marginalized on national security issues by the president and had come to see his departure as inevitable. According to reports, Trump had been discussing replacing Coats for months. Trump has long faced scrutiny for his warm comments on Russia and his changing positions on whether Russia interfered to help him secure his 2016 election victory. Robert Mueller concluded in the special counsel's Russia investigation that there was insufficient evidence to charge the president or his aides with criminally conspiring with Russia in 2016. Trump in a tweet Sunday announced that Coats would step down in mid-August and nominated Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas as his replacement. In his tweet, he thanked Coats for his service but offered him no praise. "The intelligence community is stronger than ever and increasingly well prepared to meet new challenges and opportunities," Coats wrote in his resignation letter, citing the recent appointment of an official charged with countering foreign election interference. During his time as director of national intelligence, Coats had publicly contradicted Trump on the president's claims regarding Russia and North Korea. In a statement released after Trump's summit in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2018, Coats rebutted the president's apparent acceptance of Putin's claim that Russia had not interfered in the 2016 election. At a national security conference in Colorado last year, Coats reacted with incredulity when told Trump had invited Putin to the White House at the summit. "That's going to be special," he remarked. And in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, Coats contradicted Trump's claims that North Korea no longer posed a threat because of his summits with its leader, Kim Jong Un. Coats told lawmakers that North Korea "was unlikely to give up" its nuclear weapons. He also contradicted Trump's claim that Iran was seeking to gear up its nuclear program. In contrast to Coats, Ratcliffe is a Trump loyalist who has backed Trump's claims that Mueller 's investigation into Russian election interference was a partisan plot to unseat Trump. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, he said the special counsel's report and its conclusions "weren't from Robert Mueller" but rather "were written by what a lot of people believe was Hillary Clinton's de facto legal team."
Gee, a former staffer to John Kerry does not want to see Trump hire any people who support Trump. Who woulda thunk? And yes, the swamp needs to be worried with Johnny Ratcliffe, Bill Barr, and Durham on the scene. Deal with it.
I see that I touched a nerve. Hope you will be okay, and that we will not see you crying on CNN later. There's a lot of that going around.