 [MSN] Richard Grenell’s tenure as the nation’s top intelligence official may be short-lived, but he wasted no time this week starting to shape his team of advisers, ousting his office’s No. 2 official ‐ a longtime intelligence officer ‐ and bringing in an expert on Trump conspiracy theories to help lead the agency, according to officials.
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Mr. Grenell has also requested the intelligence behind the classified briefing last week before the House Intelligence Committee where officials told politicians that Russia was interfering in November’s presidential election and that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia favored President Trump’s re-election. The briefing later prompted Mr. Trump’s anger as he complained that Democrats would use it against him.
Joseph Maguire, the former acting director of national intelligence, and his deputy, Andrew P. Hallman, resigned on Friday. Mr. Grenell told Mr. Hallman, popular in the office’s Liberty Crossing headquarters, that his service was no longer needed, according to two officials. Mr. Hallman, who has worked in the office or at the C.I.A. for three decades, expressed confidence in his colleagues in a statement but also referred to the "uncertainties that come with change."
One of his first hires was Kashyap Patel, a senior National Security Council staff member and former key aide to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, and the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Patel will have a mandate to "clean house," CBS News reported, citing a person close to the matter.
Mr. Patel was best known as the lead author of a politically charged memo two years ago that accused F.B.I. and Justice Department leaders of abusing their surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser. The memo was widely criticized as misleading, though an inspector general later found other problems with aspects of the surveillance.
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Working with Mr. Nunes, Mr. Patel began what they called Objective Medusa to examine the F.B.I.’s investigation into whether anyone associated with the Trump campaign conspired with Russia’s election interference in 2016. |