Democrats in Intel are Big Mad That Tulsi Gabbard Will Not Share Details of Gossip About Jared Kushner
The summary of the story basically circles back to that NSA/CIA whistleblower intercept they previously were using to attack DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Now that the whistleblower’s lawyer (same lawyer as last CIA whistleblower, Ciaramella) has leaked the subject of the conversation was Jared Kushner the democrats really want to know the details.
Two foreign nationals (unknown countries) were discussing the U.S. position toward Iran. In their conversation they talked about Jared Kushner. Their conversation was intercepted by NSA/CIA using an “exceptionally sensitive surveillance method.” The intercept was written, evaluated and determined to be “gossip” but given to the ODNI, Gabbard.
The whistleblower was upset the intercept was not shared with the larger intelligence apparatus. Thus, they were angry at Gabbard. The ODNI followed the distribution for the whistleblower complaint, but not the underlying intercepted details of the conversation.
The White House has now asserted “executive privilege” over the content of the intercept, thereby bolstering the position of not sharing what was previously determined to be gossip. The DNI was asked for the details, and Gabbard has told the Democrats the White House has asserted privilege. The House and Senate Intelligence committee democrats are now big mad they don’t get to read the gossip.
(VIA WSJ) – WASHINGTON—The Trump administration told Congress it won’t share with lawmakers the classified intelligence that led to a whistleblower complaint against U.S. spy chief Tulsi Gabbard, citing presidential claims of executive privilege.
In an email to Democratic congressional staffers sent on Feb. 13 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Gabbard’s office said it was unable to provide the unredacted intelligence that underpinned the complaint “due to the assertion of executive privilege to portions” of the intelligence itself.
In a Tuesday letter to Gabbard, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees, asked who asserted privilege over the intelligence report and on what basis.
[…] A spokeswoman for Director of National Intelligence Gabbard declined to directly address the decision to not share the underlying intelligence with Congress. She instead referred to a previous letter to lawmakers from the office’s general counsel that said Gabbard had met her requirements concerning notification to Congress about the complaint.
[…] The intelligence, which is at least in part about Iran, is said to derive from an exceptionally sensitive surveillance method. Officials have said any disclosure of the collection method could damage U.S. national security. Gabbard’s office ultimately shared the complaint with select lawmakers earlier this month, but redacted significant portions of it, also chiefly on grounds of executive privilege.
In the new letter, Warner and Himes said they weren’t able to confirm whether the discussion at issue was about Kushner because the version of the complaint they received was so heavily redacted. (more)
If I had to hazard a guess as to what is going on, based entirely on the current state of politics and what we know about how the IC and Democrats operate, overlaid against the domestic IC influence provocations currently underway, here’s my suspicion:
Bad actors within the CIA organized two friendly foreign intel officials to have a conversation. The script is about U.S. policy toward Iran, and the ‘gossip’ is that Jared Kushner is an Israeli intelligence asset, a blue sparrow, previously inserted into the Trump family. That ‘intercept’ would send everyone in the USA bananas regardless of truth or merit.
It sounds crazy, but that’s the level of conspiratorial nuttery, the sort of thing the IC would feed, to bolster the currently swirling year of crazy and further divide Trump’s base of support.
Whatever the underlying intercept consists of, it’s coming out of a highly political U.S. intelligence system; therefore, I would not give it any merit – unless, of course, you choose to cling to their prior construct of Trump colluding with Russia.
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