Gabbard fires National Intelligence Council officials after Venezuela report
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired the National Intelligence Council's top two officials over what the Trump administration has called the "politicization of intelligence," Fox News Digital first reported Wednesday.
The big picture: The firing of acting NIC chair Mike Collins and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, comes after an intel report from the council last week contradicted an administration assertion linking Venezuela's Maduro regime to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired the National Intelligence Council's top two officials over what the Trump administration has called the "politicization of intelligence," Fox News Digital first reported Wednesday.
The big picture: The firing of acting NIC chair Mike Collins and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, comes after an intel report from the council last week contradicted an administration assertion linking Venezuela's Maduro regime to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua.
- The administration has used this to invoke the wartime authority of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport undocumented immigrants with what critics say is little or no due process.
- She added that "the leak of classified info was a NIC product, which is against the law, that is the issue," as she pushed back on a Washington Post report saying Gabbard had "removed or sidelined officials perceived to not support Trump's political agenda."
- Gang experts say the threat of Tren de Aragua in the U.S. is overblown and a lot smaller than Trump officials have claimed.
- The administration has repeatedly called MS-13, a gang started in Southern California by Central American refugees from the 1980s civil wars, a transnational gang and has compared it to terrorist groups and organized Mexican cartels.
- Lidia E. Nuño, a Texas State University criminology professor and MS-13 expert, told Axios that MS-13 is a street gang that shows little evidence of sophisticated transnational criminal operations like cartels or the mafia.
On his bad days, the octogenarian shitposter formerly known as Ishmael forgets who is president.
