Donald Trump announces that he has replaced Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire with Richard Grenell, who has no experience in intelligence whatsoever.
A 53-year-old former United Nations ambassador’s spokesman, media consultant and Fox News commentator with no previous experience in the intelligence community, Grenell was best known as a pugnacious Trump loyalist who made undiplomatic comments about his host country’s unwillingness to contribute more to NATO.
The New York Times
Grenell was previously Trump’s ambassador to Germany, where he was considered unprofessional and controversial to his German counterparts for his association with the far right.
On the same day, the Trump administration re-assigns Kashyap “Kash” Patel from his controversial position at the National Security Council. His new position? Adviser to Richard Grenell at the ODNI.
Kashyap Patel undertook a thorough reorganization of the O.D.N.I. Even Grenell was wary of Patel, who had expectations of being the acting director’s deputy and who while on Nunes’s staff reportedly shared dubious information about Ukraine with Trump, though that was not his field of expertise…
Patel set about fulfilling a White House request to cut the O.D.N.I.’s staff, according to someone familiar with the events. The concern within the intelligence community was that downsizing could offer a pretext for purging individuals like the anonymous C.I.A. analyst who filed the Ukraine whistle-blower complaint.
The New York Times
Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/08/magazine/us-russia-intelligence.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-intelligence-chief-richard-grenell-germany-ambassador-far-right-colonial-officer-a9345721.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/kash-patel-odni-post-116546
Photo: Public Domain
