Raw Story: Tulsi Gabbard under fire after ‘desperate and irresponsible’ move to override CIA

Two former CIA officials are concerned about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her eagerness to release top secret information that could compromise sources and methods for agents.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Gabbard’s indiscriminate way of releasing classified documents regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election angered many career intelligence experts. Gabbard published the information with minimal redactions.

“Gabbard, with the blessing of President Donald Trump, overrode arguments from the CIA and other intelligence agencies that more of the document should remain classified to obscure U.S. spy agencies’ sources and methods, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others interviewed for this report, because of the matter’s sensitivity,” said the report.

While CIA Director John Ratcliffe has been supportive of the release of information, those who actually work in intelligence have concerns about the release, but also that the characterization of the evidence is false. Gabbard and Trump claimed that their evidence proved that Russia did not hack the 2016 election votes. However, that was never part of the allegations. Russians hacked the Democratic and Republican Party servers and leaked information from the former. Russian-funded content farms generated scores of memes and posts spreading conspiracies about Hillary Clinton while being supportive of Trump.

“Multiple independent reviews, including an exhaustive bipartisan probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee, have found that Putin intervened in part to help Trump,” characterized the Post.

The investigation documents contain multiple references to human sources that detail Putin’s plans. Those sources are among the “most closely guarded secrets,” the report said. “After the report was completed in 2020, it was considered so sensitive that it remained in storage at the CIA rather than on Capitol Hill.”

Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior CIA and White House official, revealed on an episode of the “SpyTalk” podcast that the report had “sources and methods” that “could easily” be “inferred in almost every instance.”

“I don’t know if I’ve seen a document of that sensitivity so lightly redacted,” he said of the release from Gabbard.

The report released went through multiple reviews, but the once-secret document was “circulating” among Trump administration staff. Gabbard was the one who wanted to release as much as possible.

Gabbard “has greater declassification authority than all other intelligence elements and is not required to get their approval prior to release,” said one person familiar with the process when speaking to the Post.

Trump then decided there would be “minimal redactions and no edits,” the person added.

Sen. Mark. Warner (D-VA) called Gabbard’s release of the report “desperate and irresponsible,” and said it threatens some of the Intelligence community’s “most sensitive sources and methods” it uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe.

“And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us,” he warned.

https://www.rawstory.com/tulsi-gabbard-2673864250

MSNBC: Laura Loomer’s White House witch hunt is just getting started

The far-right conspiracy theorist has taken credit for numerous high-level firings over what she claims is “disloyalty” to President Trump.

A self-described “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism” influencer is one of the most influential people in the Trump White House — despite not actually working for the administration. And she’s brought a particularly odious form of cancel culture to President Donald Trump’s second term that’s led to well over a dozen White House and federal employees recently fired for wrongthink.

Laura Loomer, 32, is known as much for her overt racism as her peddling of evidence-free conspiracy theories — such as 9/11 was an “inside job,” the Parkland high school shooting was staged, and Ohio was being overrun by “cannibalistic Haitians” who were “eating people’s pets.” Loomer has been described by many news outlets as a personal friend and confidant of Trump’s, and she’s fond of bragging about the “scalps” she’s collected, referring to the former White House and federal employees she successfully targeted for firing.

James Risen, writing in The Guardian, noted that Loomer’s critics insist “she has just been taking credit for moves that Trump was already planning,” but added that “Trump himself has said he takes her seriously, so it may be more accurate to describe her as Trump’s de facto national security adviser.”

Loomer has also referred to herself as Trump’s “loyalty enforcer,” and she has just added a few more “scalps” to her collection.

The Daily Wire — a right-wing partisan site co-founded by MAGA pundit Ben Shapiro — reported that National Security Agency general counsel April Falcon Doss had previously worked for Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak called her a “transparently partisan activist who has written publicly about her opposition to Trump.” As evidence, Rosiak cited Doss’ call “for Trump to be permanently banned from social media for staging an ‘insurrection.’”

Loomer told The New York Times that she “reposted a tweet that exposed her last week and flagged it for the right people.” Doss was fired last week.

Another civil servant recently “Loomer’d” is Jen Easterly, a former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), who had her job offer to serve as the distinguished chair of the Military Academy at West Point’s social sciences department rescinded by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. Loomer earlier this week called Easterly’s job offer a “vetting crisis” and later boasted that “All Biden holdovers must be removed from the Trump admin.”

Loomer has taken credit for at least a dozen other “scalps” for “disloyalty” — including federal prosecutors, directors and aides on the National Security Council and even Trump’s original surgeon general nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, because of her support for the Covid vaccines that Trump helped bring into existence in his first term.

But one of the most striking Loomer-influenced cancellations is the resignation of Dr. Vinay Prasad from his roles as the Food and Drug Administration’s head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and chief medical and scientific officer.

Prasad — an acolyte of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who made a name for himself during the Covid pandemic by blasting the FDA and other health agencies on social media, podcasts and his blog — was only on the job a little more than two months. But he made his MAHA mark when he overrode the FDA’s vaccine experts’ recommendations on two Covid vaccines, which led directly to the FDA announcing its plan to only recommend Covid shots for people over 65 or with high-risk health conditions.

But Prasad was not spared from MAGA cancel culture, after Loomer dug up some old podcast clips where Prasad was critical of Trump. In a classic case of people supporting the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party being shocked that the leopards subsequently ate their faces, the MAGA-friendly and cancel culture-obsessed Free Press (where Prasad has been a contributing writer) published an editorial decrying Loomer’s “shameful smear campaign against our honorable, decent friend.”

Loomer told Politico that she expects “hundreds” more to be purged for disloyalty to the dear leader. And Loomer is soliciting snitches via an anonymous tip line.

“I’m happy to take people’s tips about disloyal appointees, disloyal staffers and Biden holdovers,” Loomer said. “And I guess you could say that my tip line has come to serve as a form of therapy for Trump administration officials who want to expose their colleagues who should not be in the positions that they’re in.”

We’re a little more than one-eighth of the way through the second Trump administration, and one of its defining features is that it is led by astoundingly unqualified people whose raison d’etat is ruthlessly enforcing ideological orthodoxy and slavish devotion to the president, rather than the country and the Constitution.

And whether you previously worked for people Trump doesn’t like, or you told the objective truth about Trump’s attempted self-coup, or even if you previously criticized him before turning MAGA sycophant, your job is not safe from being eliminated at the behest of a person who during the 2024 election made comments about Vice President Kamala Harris that were so unimpeachably racist they even drew rebukes from loyal Trumpists JD Vance and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Trump’s election was widely seen as a rebuke against the excesses of left-wing cancel culture. But the Loomering of the federal government shows we probably haven’t seen the worst of MAGA cancel culture yet.

When the Trump dictatorship decides to reenact the Night of the Long Knives, Laura will be running the show.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/laura-loomer-trump-maga-cancel-culture-firings-rcna222581

Daily Beast: Trump, 79, Posts Deranged AI Video of Obama Being Arrested

The bizarre post came as the president seeks to move on from the Epstein controversy tearing apart his base.

President Donald Trump shared a bizarre fake video depicting the arrest and imprisonment of one of his predecessors, Barack Obama, following a furious weekend posting rampage.

Trump shared the video from a pro-MAGA TikTok user to his Truth Social platform on Sunday, after posting throughout the weekend about Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that the Obama administration engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” to subvert his 2016 election victory.

The video opens with footage of Obama and other prominent Democrats declaring that “no one is above the law.” It then cuts to Pepe the Frog, an alt-right meme mascot, dressed as a clown and honking its nose, before showing an AI-generated sequence of Obama being arrested by the FBI during his Oval Office meeting with Trump in November 2016.

It then depicts Obama in prison in an orange jumpsuit. The arrest montage is bizarrely set to one of Trump’s favorite tunes, Village People’s “YMCA.”

It followed his director of national intelligence’s announcement on Friday that she was referring Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over allegations they “manufactured” intelligence to promote the idea that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Trump has posted at least 17 times about Gabbard’s announcement since Friday.

Gabbard claimed that newly declassified documents were evidence that Obama and some of his cabinet members “politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

Democrats have dismissed her claims as baseless and riddled with errors. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said it was “one more example of the director of national intelligence trying to cook the books.”

Some MAGA supporters were also skeptical and framed it as a distraction, given the timing. Gabbard’s announcement followed days of controversy over the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which has not died down despite Trump’s best efforts to stifle it, distract from it and blame Democrats.

But many other Trump supporters have gotten on board. The Obama arrest video was shared by MAGA fans on social media Sunday night. “MAKE THIS A REALITY,” right-wing journalist Nick Sortor wrote on X, tagging Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Trump, a convicted criminal, has increasingly normalized the idea of using the Justice Department to go after political enemies. On Sunday night alone, he also floated sending Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff to prison and posted a collage depicting fake mugshots of various Obama-era officials, including James Comey, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice, wearing orange jumpsuits.

Trump was found guilty in May 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, marking the first time in U.S. history a former president has been convicted of felony crimes. He’s appealing the verdict.

The conservative-stacked Supreme Court ruled last summer that presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts while in office, raising the bar for prosecuting Trump—and any of his predecessors—for actions taken as president.

This 34X convicted felon is totally incompetent to be our president!!!

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-79-posts-deranged-ai-video-of-barack-obama-being-arrested

Alternet: ‘One of the worst’: Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem slammed for ‘false accusation’ against man who was framed

Authorities have acknowledged an error in their initial assessment of a Wisconsin man who was arrested last month under suspicion of threatening President Donald Trump, CNN reported Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Secretary Kristi Noem had previously labeled Ramón Morales Reyes, an undocumented immigrant, as a potential threat based on threatening letters allegedly written by him. However, a subsequent investigation revealed that Morales Reyes, who cannot read or write in English, was framed by Demetric Deshawn Scott, a 52-year-old man from Milwaukee.

Bimbo #2 doesn’t care who or what she hurts. Just ask her goat or puppy.

Never mind, the goat & puppy are dead — Bimbo #2 shot them.

https://www.alternet.org/kristi-noem-dhs

The Atlantic: DOGE Was Bad. Schedule F Will Be Worse.

In the waning days of the first Trump administration, the White House announced a plan to convert an estimated 50,000 government employees to a status similar to political appointees—meaning that they would become “at will” hires who serve purely at the president’s pleasure. Schedule F, as this plan was known, was never implemented then and was revoked immediately under Joe Biden’s presidency. But now the policy is back, formally resurrected by executive order on April 18. If this new-look Schedule F survives the inevitable court challenges, it will mark a major step forward in a MAGA quest laid out by J. D. Vance in 2021 to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state,” and “replace them with our people.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/doge-was-bad-schedule-f-will-be-worse/ar-AA1DLhQ7

UPI News: Senior U.S. Navy officer at NATO fired

King Donald and his fellow bigots have fired another female flag officer:

U.S. Navy Adm. Shoshana Chatfield has been fired as the U.S. military representative at the NATO Military Committee, making her the latest high-ranking military official to be dismissed by the Trump administration.

Chatfield’s firing was reported Monday by PoliticoStripes and The Washington Post, which each cited unnamed individuals familiar with the situation. No cause for the dismissal was given.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/senior-u-s-navy-officer-at-nato-fired/ar-AA1CuKJ5