With Trump having a soulless toady as Attorney General, he now needs a soulless toady for Director of National Intelligence to continue his purge of anyone who might be able to inform America of his wrongdoing, and he's found the near-perfect scuzzball for the job.
President Trump was expected to name Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, to be the acting director of national intelligence, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
Mr. Grenell, whose outspokenness throughout his career as a political operative and then as ambassador has prompted criticism, is a vocal Trump loyalist who will lead a group of national security agencies often viewed skeptically by the White House.
He would take over from Joseph Maguire, who has served as the acting director of national intelligence since the resignation last summer of Dan Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana. Mr. Grenell, who has pushed to advance gay rights in his current post, would apparently also be the first openly gay cabinet member.
Mr. Grenell did not respond to a request for comment, nor did a White House spokesman. The people familiar with the move cautioned that the president had a history of changing his mind on personnel decisions after they were revealed in the news media.
Under American law, Mr. Maguire had to give up his temporary role before March 12. He could return to his old job as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, but he might choose to step down from government.
Mr. Trump can choose any Senate-confirmed official to replace Mr. Maguire as the acting head of the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies.
Grenell is just about the worst-case scenario of people who would get the job. It's possible that Trump will replace Grenell in nine months, but by then it'll be a moot point once the election happens. There's no doubt on two things though: he is a Trump loyalist and that he has zero intelligence experience.
As ambassador to Germany, Grenell has been a loyal and outspoken support of the president, frequently with reporters on his voluble Twitter feed.
He is also the latest Trump loyalist to take on a new role in the aftermath of impeachment. Trump has long been a skeptic and even critic of U.S. intelligence agencies, especially in response to their shared conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
In 2016, Grenell dismissed Russia's meddling, which resulted in a special counsel investigation and multiple indictments, as nothing new. “Russian or Russian-approved tactics like cyber warfare and campaigns of misinformation have been happening for decades,” he wrote in an op-ed for Fox News.
Grenell has served as a Republican operative, commentator, national security aide and spokesperson for multiple high-profile Republicans, including former 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He served as communications director at the United Nations for eight years under President George W. Bush, making him the longest serving person in that role.
His predecessor, Maguire, was at the forefront of Trump’s impeachment drama and testified before Congress over a whistleblower's complaint about the president’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Democrats criticized Maguire for initially blocking Congress from obtaining the whistleblower’s complaint to the inspector general.
"In light of recent reporting on the whistleblower complaint, I want to make clear that I have upheld my responsibility to follow the law every step of the way,” Maguire said in a statement about his handling of the complaint.
During his testimony, Maguire defended the rights of the whistleblower but painstakingly avoided criticisms of the president.
"I believe that the whistleblower followed the steps every step of the way," Maguire said. “I think the whistleblower did the right thing.”
In his announcement of Grenell’s role, Trump thanked Maguire for his work as director of national intelligence and suggested he might be transferred to a different job.
“I would like to thank Joe Maguire for the wonderful job he has done, and we look forward to working with him closely, perhaps in another capacity within the administration!” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.
If Trump wanted to keep Maguire, he would have nominated him for the role full-time. He didn't. He's handing the position over to Grenell for a reason, and that reason is to make sure the entire US intelligence apparatus is working for Donald Trump personally.
Grenell can do a lot of damage in the next nine months, and I expect he will.
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