Tag Archives: Tulsi Gabbard

CBS News: Top Gabbard aide under scrutiny for emails showing push to edit intel assessment

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President Trump’s nominee to head the National Counterterrorism Center is under fresh scrutiny as emails show he pressed senior intelligence analysts to amend an assessment of links between the Venezuelan government and the criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, known as TDA, to align the assessment more closely with Trump administration policies and to include references critical of Biden-era immigration programs.

The nominee, Joe Kent, is just being a good sycophant, sucking up to the bosses and giving them what they want to hear.

Counterterrorism nominee Joe Kent under scrutiny as emails show he pushed for edits to intelligence assessment
Emails show Kent pressed senior intelligence analysts to amend assessment of links between Venezuelan government and Tren de Aragua gang.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/counterterrorism-nominee-joe-kent-emails-edits-intelligence-assessment

New York Times: Official Pushed to Rewrite Intelligence So It Could Not Be ‘Used Against’ Trump

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An assessment contradicted a presidential proclamation. A political appointee demanded a redo, then pushed for changes to the new analysis, too.

New emails document how a top aide to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, ordered analysts to edit an assessment with the hope of insulating President Trump and Ms. Gabbard from being attacked for the administration’s claim that Venezuela’s government controls a criminal gang.

“We need to do some rewriting” and more analytic work “so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,” Joe Kent, the chief of staff to Ms. Gabbard, wrote in an email to a group of intelligence officials on April 3, using shorthand for Ms. Gabbard’s position and for the president of the United States.

In other words, their idea of “intelligence” is to write what they think Trump wants to hear in a way that won’t inconvenience him, rather than to provide a realistic assessment of what’s happening in the world.

Typical sycophants!!!

gabbard-intelligence-venezuelans-tren-de-aragua-trump.html

Alternet: More than revenge: Here’s why Trump is really targeting his own former officials | Opinion

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During President Donald Trump’s first three months in office, his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda.

In April 2025, Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate two men who served in his first administration, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, because they spoke out against his policies and corrected his false claims about the 2020 election that he lost.

Further, Trump revoked the security clearances for advisers and retired generals who publicly criticized him during the 2024 election campaign.

On their face, such moves appear to be a coordinated campaign of personal retribution. But as political science scholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, we believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.

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But to carry out a power grab, incumbent leaders also need allies who will stay silent or, better yet, endorse their attempts to consolidate control.

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Recall that Trump only left office in January 2021 because key Republican officials defied his attempts to overturn an election he lost.

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In authoritarian contexts, loyalty is not an intrinsic quality. Authoritarian leaders do not necessarily select those with whom they have long work experience that leads to mutual trust.

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Instead, the challenge for authoritarian leaders is finding people to do their bidding. And the best people for this job are those who never would have earned their position in politics without the leader’s influence.

Unqualified appointees who can’t ascend to political power based on their merits have little choice but to stick with the leader. These people appear loyal, but only because their careers are tied to the leader staying in power.

www.alternet.org
More than revenge: Here’s why Trump is really targeting his own former officials | Opinion

https://www.alternet.org/trump-revenge-2672110754

Washington Post: Gabbard fires leaders of intelligence group that wrote Venezuela assessment

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The director of national intelligence fired top officials weeks after their group authored an assessment contradicting President Donald Trump’s legal rationale for deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired the top two officials at the National Intelligence Council, weeks after the council wrote an assessment that contradicted President Donald Trump’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process.

Gabbard removed Michael Collins, the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, as well as his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, according to a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office.

The actions are the latest purge by Gabbard, who has said she is fighting politicization of the intelligence community but has removed or sidelined officials perceived to not support Trump’s political agenda.

Fighting politicization? It’s Trump and his band of sycophants who are politicizing everything.

In any case, Trump doesn’t dare keep people like Michael Collins and Maria Langan-Riekhof around. People who tell & write the truth are so inconvenient.

Gabbard fires leaders of intelligence group that wrote Venezuela assessment
The director of national intelligence fired officials weeks after their group wrote an assessment contradicting Trump’s rationale for deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/14/gabbard-intelligence-venezuela-tren-de-aragua

Huffington Post: Congressman: It’s ‘Fair To Wonder’ If Pete Hegseth Was Drinking Amid Signal Use

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Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) said Monday that it’s “fair to wonder” if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been drinking alcohol again given his “reckless” use of Signal, a third-party messaging app, to share highly sensitive military plans with national security officials and separately with members of his family.

“When Secretary Hegseth keeps making reckless mistakes with our national security – like leaking war plans in Signal chats or the chaos we’re seeing at the Pentagon – it’s fair to wonder if he actually stopped drinking like he promised during his confirmation,” Gomez told HuffPost in a statement. “People have legitimate concerns about whether his judgment is compromised.”

Congressman: It’s ‘Fair To Wonder’ If Pete Hegseth Was Drinking Amid Signal Use

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/congressman-it-s-fair-to-wonder-if-pete-hegseth-was-drinking-amid-signal-use/ar-AA1DlzsX

Fox News: Trump threatens to bomb Iran unless they end nuclear weapons program and begin talks on new deal

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King Donald’s diplomatic toolbox seems to be limited to (1) bombs and (2) tariffs.

Trump told NBC on Saturday that “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” he said. “But there’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”

Trump threatens to bomb Iran unless they end nuclear weapons program and begin talks on new deal

Raw Story: ‘Worst of the lot’: Veteran columnist heaps scorn on ‘revolting’ Marco Rubio

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“I think he’s the worst of the lot,” Rubin said of Rubio. “The rest of them are so stupid and so ignorant that they really don’t get it; they’re just playing a game or they’re following Trump or they’re trying to be with the cool kids. Rubio knows better. First of all, he was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. If anyone should know about preserving security, it’s he — and he was on that same Signal chain.”

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“He also has spent his entire life fighting communism, fighting oppression, fighting Cuba,” she said. “You know what they do in Cuba? They disappear people and they throw them into a hellhole of a jail. He has become the very thing that he has spent his entire career railing against. He used to be a great defender of Ukraine; now he’s instrumental in turning it over to Russia. So the glaring hypocrisy, the soullessness, the willingness to sell down the river all of the dissidents, all of the freedoms, all of the besieged countries that he once defended is really beyond the pale.”

‘Worst of the lot’: Veteran columnist heaps scorn on ‘revolting’ Marco Rubio

‘Worst of the lot’: Veteran columnist heaps scorn on ‘revolting’ Marco Rubio

CNN: Concerns about Hegseth’s judgment come roaring back after group chat scandal

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“I know exactly what I’m doing,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesday.

By Wednesday, however, other defense officials were increasingly skeptical of that, especially after The Atlantic magazine revealed the details that Hegseth shared in the Signal chat about the pending strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen, including the timing and types of aircraft.

“It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court-martialed for this,” a defense official told CNN. “My most junior analysts know not to do this.”

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But former national security and intelligence officials say it’s Hegseth who looks particularly bad given the level of detail he shared.

“The egregious actor here is Hegseth,” said one former senior intelligence official. “He’s in the bullseye now because he puts all this out on a Signal chat.”

Interviews with multiple current and former national security officials this week, including career military and civilian officials, reflect growing concerns about Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon.

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Many of his orders are verbal and based on gut instinct rather than a deliberative, multi-layered process, people familiar with his methods said.

“He’s a TV personality,” one of the sources said. “[A general officer] makes a recommendation, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, go do it.’ [Former Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin would never be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, go do it.’ 

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Several DoD officials told CNN that Hegseth seems more preoccupied with appearances than with substance—wanting to appear more “lethal” than his predecessor and pulling resources from elsewhere in DoD to achieve that image.

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“Of all the things they could be doing, the places they’re putting their focuses on first are really things that just don’t matter … This was literally a waste of our time,” a defense official told CNN of the content purge. “This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared.”

And Hegseth is outranked and outclassed by his predecessors:

Hegseth ultimately rose to the rank of Major before leaving the National Guard in 2021, and has the least experience of any Senate-confirmed defense secretary in recent history.

His immediate predecessor Austin, a four-star general, served for 41 years and commanded US Central Command; former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper served as the Secretary of the Army before being confirmed as SecDef; and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, also a 40-year veteran and four-star general, commanded US Central Command as well before being confirmed as Trump’s first secretary of defense.

Concerns about Hegseth’s judgment come roaring back after group chat scandal

Concerns about Hegseth’s judgment come roaring back after group chat scandal

Associated Press: Bondi [Bimbo #3] signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely, despite a long history of similar inquiries

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Even as President Donald Trump insisted “it’s not really an FBI thing,” the reality is that the FBI and Justice Department for decades have been responsible for enforcing Espionage Act statutes governing the mishandling — whether intentional or negligent — of national defense information like the kind shared on Signal, a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications but is not approved for classified information.

The Justice Department has broad discretion to open an investigation, though Attorney General Pam Bondi, who introduced Trump at a Justice Department event this month, signaled at an unrelated news conference on Thursday that she was disinclined to do so. She repeated Trump administration talking points that the highly sensitive information in the chat was not classified, though current and former U.S. officials have said the posting of the exact launch times of aircraft and times that bombs would be released before those pilots were even in the air would have been classified.

Bondi signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely, despite a long history of similar inquiries
FBI Director Kash Patel may not have been part of a Signal chat in which other Trump administration national security officials discussed detailed attack plans.

Pam Bondi signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely | AP News

Wall Street Journal: Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Fallout Grows

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Republicans react with concern about new details on posts about weapons used and timing of Yemen attack

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came under increasing scrutiny after more details emerged Wednesday showing that he posted plans of an imminent military strike against Houthi militants, including the timing and weapon systems, on an unclassified group chat used by senior administration officials.

Several Democrats called for his resignation, saying Hegseth had flouted longstanding security procedures for handling sensitive military information. And the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter Wednesday requesting the Pentagon inspector general to investigate the chat.

It asks for an assessment of Defense Department policies on sharing of sensitive and classified information on nongovernmental networks and messaging services and to examine whether any individuals transferred classified information to unclassified systems.

“The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), who chairs the committee told reporters. “If mistakes were made…they should be acknowledged.”

The new messages made public by the Atlantic magazine Wednesday showed that Hegseth texted details to other senior administration officials about the specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack and mentions intelligence that an unnamed target of the strikes was at a “known location.” 

Such information is normally guarded carefully by the Pentagon before imminent strikes to avoid disclosures that could help adversaries. 

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“The Signal incident is what happens when you have the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen,” [Sen. Mark] Kelly wrote on X on Wednesday. “We’re lucky it didn’t cost any servicemembers their lives, but for the safety of our military and our country, Secretary Hegseth needs to resign.”

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Earlier this month, the Pentagon sent an advisory to all military personnel warning that a “vulnerability” had been identified in Signal and warned against using it for classified information.

“It borders on incompetence,” Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator and defense secretary during the Obama administration, said of Hegseth’s texts. “It’s certainly reckless.”

Pete Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Signal Chat Fallout Grows – WSJ