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AN 8 26

Last year, the Trump administration hired a cybersecurity firm to investigate White House claims that voting equipment in Puerto Rico had been “compromised” in the 2020 election, but after the company found no evidence to support voter fraud, it has gone on to become the target of a smear campaign by the president’s loyalists.

According to new reporting by CNN, “After hearing that the firm had found no evidence of vote tampering, allies of President Donald Trump derailed the cybersecurity firm’s work with the government in part by spreading false claims that the firm was funded by liberal billionaire George Soros, according to the firm’s executives and documents they provided to CNN.” Jason Wareham, CEO of the firm, called Mojave Research, has revealed that a group of “White House-adjacent” Trump allies was “dissatisfied” that he “was not willing to name and shame at that moment and to say, ‘Turns out 2020 was a landslide for Trump. Nobody knew.’”

CNN notes that “Mojave Research had no prior experience in testing election systems when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence contacted them in the spring of 2025 as part of the agency’s broader probe into voting equipment. ODNI hired the firm to analyze a specific voting machine made by Liberty Vote (formerly Dominion Voting Systems) that the agency acquired from Puerto Rico. Mojave did the work in six weeks in Wareham’s basement in Reston, Virginia, according to Wareham.”

While Mojave submitted its report in July 2025, Wareham says that it has still not been made public. The company’s Chief Technology Officer Manbir Gulati, however, spoke about it at the DEF CON cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas last week, saying, “We found extensive and largely unacceptable weaknesses, but we did not find evidence that those weaknesses were actively exploited or that votes were altered.”

“After the company made clear what it had found, multiple figures aligned with Trump began to cast doubt on the integrity of Mojave.” According to CNN, “What Wareham’s team found — and didn’t find — in his basement would become a Rorschach test for Trump administration officials focused on election issues. It’s a cautionary tale of how a company that says it wanted to provide the administration with unbiased election security analysis was rejected by a group of officials who still dispute the results of the 2020 election and have Trump’s ear. The Trump administration’s revisiting of the 2020 election has extended to Arizona, where the FBI has obtained records of an audit that confirmed Joe Biden won the state.”

“I lost count of the number of times I heard ‘Maricopa County is a crime scene,’” Wareham said. As CNN explains, “Maricopa County is Arizona’s largest county and has been at the center of Trump allies’ false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.”

According to Gulati, “What we encountered [were] a lot of competing factions within the government — people who want the boogeyman to be out there and are willing to do anything to find it and then people who actually do genuinely care about the issue [of election security]. There was a huge faction that was like, ‘Mojave doesn’t know what they’re doing.' They’re dummies and that’s why they can’t find evidence of compromise.”

CNN reports that “Wareham, a Republican, submitted a declaration in September under the penalty of perjury to the Trump administration to refute the notion that his company was ‘some form of deep plant meant to ensure the suppression of truth around compromised elections or election systems,’ the declaration says. Wareham submitted his declaration and financial statements to ODNI to prove he was not affiliated with Soros, who has long been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories about secret levers of power. The next month, Wareham said he received an email, reviewed by CNN, which said that ODNI had issued a ‘stop-work order’ on the contract.”

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an 2 25

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) to serve as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence. Republican senators almost unanimously voted for Gabbard despite unified Democratic opposition, with a final vote tally of 52-48.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who was the Senate Republican leader for nearly two decades and a former member of the "Gang of Six" that gets classified intelligence briefings, was the lone dissenter among his party. After casting his "no" vote with Democrats, McConnell ripped Gabbard over her "history of alarming lapses in judgment."

"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is a key participant in the process that informs every major national security decision the President makes. The ODNI wields significant authority over how the intelligence community allocates its resources, conducts its collection and analysis, and manages the classification and declassification of our nation's most sensitive secrets," he stated. "In my assessment, Tulsi Gabbard failed to demonstrate that she is prepared to assume this tremendous national trust."

Multiple Democratic elected officials also tore into their GOP colleagues over their decision to be a rubber stamp for Trump. On Bluesky, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) wrote that Gabbard amplified "propaganda" for Russian President Vladimir Putin and deposed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for years. Anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project tweeted that Russia refers to Gabbard as "Putin's girlfriend." And Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) slammed Republicans as "worse than useless" for confirming "Tulsi F—ing Gabbard."

"Confirming her as DNI serves only to tell Trump that Senate Rs would rather lick his boots than do a single damn thing to protect our national security," he tweeted. "They are worse than useless. And they are putting every American at risk."

Around the same time Gabbard was confirmed, Fox News liberal host Jessica Tarlov tweeted a video of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (also one of her former Fox News colleagues) calling for Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula — which Russia has been illegally occupying since 2014 — to be considered Russian territory. Hegseth added that Ukraine shouldn't be considered for membership in the NATO alliance anytime soon.

"Tulsi confirmed at virtually the same time," Tarlov wrote. "A sunny day in Moscow even if's still only 19 degrees out."

Software engineer Alex Cole wrly noted on Bluesky that Gabbard — who was once the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee — has found far greater political success after abandoning the Democratic Party.

"Tulsi Gabbard was once on a government watchlist. Now she’s running U.S. intelligence," Cole wrote. "Moral of the story? If at first you don’t succeed, just switch political parties."

Gabbard's alleged closeness to Russia didn't go unnoticed by MSNBC columnist Brandon Friedman. He recalled a time when social media platform Instagram announced it was going dark in Russia on March 13, 2022. He then posted a screenshot of a March 23, 2022 Fox News interview with Gabbard where the former congresswoman complained that her Instagram video views had dropped from 250,000 to 300,000 to just 15,000, suggesting that Russian Instagram users were the main source of her traffic. Friedman called that complaint "the funniest thing" Gabbard said.

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob took a more somber tone, writing: "No foreign country in its right mind will share sensitive intelligence with Tulsi Gabbard. We are now a country that's flying blind in a dangerous world."

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wow, aha score zinger to trump opponent is qualification for high office, no matter lack of termperment or expertiese.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/democrats-slam-shocking-abdication-of-responsibility-as-intelligence-officials-scale-back-election-security-briefings

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Julia Conley / Common Dreams August 31, 2020

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) indicated on Sunday that his committee may subpoena intelligence officials, following Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s announcement that regular election security briefings will be scaled back ahead of the general election.

“This intelligence paid for by taxpayers doesn’t belong to Donald Trump, it doesn’t belong to the intelligence agencies, it belongs to the American people,” Schiff told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Democrats expressed outrage over the weekend after Ratcliffe announced that lawmakers will no longer be receiving in-person briefings on election security, even amid concerns that foreign powers are attempting to interfere with the 2020 general election.

In what Democratic leaders called a “shocking abdication” of responsibility, Ratcliffe sent letters to members of the Senate and House Saturday evening, indicating that only written briefings will be provided until the November election and blaming leaks from Congress for the decision.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Schiff (D-Calif.) accused Ratcliffe of betraying “the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy.”

“This intelligence belongs to the American people, not the agencies which are its custodian. And the American people have both the right and the need to know that another nation, Russia, is trying to help decide who their president should be,” said Pelosi and Schiff, referring to intelligence shared in a briefing last month.

On Twitter, Schiff accused President Donald Trump of “lying and projecting” after Trump spoke about the decision in a press conference.

“They leaked the information,” Trump said of Ratcliffe’s decision. “And what’s even worse, they leaked the wrong information. And he got tired of it. So he wants to do it in a different forum, because you have leakers on the committee.”

The scaling-back of briefings comes a month after Politico reported on a classified security briefing given to all members of Congress by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. At the meeting, Evanina acknowledged that “Russia is again trying to boost President Donald Trump’s reelection and denigrate his opponent.”

Democrats in the briefing urged Evanina to acknowledge the information publicly and denounced an earlier public statement he made in which he warned of potential election interference by Russia, China, and Iran.

The vague statement was “almost meaningless” and not helpful to voters, Democrats said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of using Ratcliffe, a loyalist to the president who was elevated to his current position after serving in the House, “to hide the ugly truth from the American people—that the president is again receiving the help of the Kremlin.”

“DNI Ratcliffe has made clear he’s in the job only to protect Trump from democracy, not democracy from Trump,” said Schumer.

Previously, Trump and his postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, have overseen what critics call the sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service. Ahead of a general election in which millions of Americans will rely on voting-by-mail due to the coronavirus pandemic, DeJoy ordered cuts to overtime, the removal of mailboxes and mail-sorting machines, and changes to post office hours. The president has also baselessly claimed that the use of mail-in ballots will invite fraud, despite the fact that he himself has voted by mail, and openly admitted that undermining the USPS will ensure universal voting-by-mail is not possible.

In 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations including a government-supported “troll farm” with conspiring to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. Trump had long accused Mueller of leading a “witch hunt” and a “hoax” about Russia’s involvement. The Mueller Report, released in 2019, found that Trump campaign officials had extensive contacts with Russians and that many lied about those communications, but stopped short of accusing the president and his advisors of conspiring with Russia in 2016.

This year, former Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub tweeted, “if America has a legitimate election, it’ll be in spite of Trump’s best efforts to prevent one.”

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who was at the center of Trump’s impeachment trial last year regarding the president’s attempt to bribe Ukraine to open a public investigation into Biden’s son, accused Ratcliffe and Trump of violating the country’s “national security and sovereignty.”

“For the DNI to curtail one of the most basic duties of our nonpartisan Intelligence Community—to keep the United States Congress fully informed about threats to our nation, in this case, about the real and rising threat of foreign election interference—is nothing less than a shameless partisan manipulation to protect the personal interests of President Trump,” said Biden. “And it is a betrayal of the oath sworn to the American people and our Constitution.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/rump-to-nominate-texas-us-rep-john-ratcliffe-to-become-director-of-national-intelligence/

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Trump to nominate Texas US Rep. John Ratcliffe to become director of national intelligence

Written by The Texas Tribune March 1, 2020

By Stacy Fernández and Patrick Svitek, The Texas Tribune

Feb. 28, 2020

“Donald Trump to nominate U.S. Rep. John Ratcliffe to become director of national intelligence” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

U.S. Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Heath Republican, was nominated as director of national intelligence Friday, President Donald Trump said in a tweet.

“Would have completed process earlier, but John wanted to wait until after IG Report was finished. John is an outstanding man of great talent!” Trump said in the tweet.

The Washington Post reported the tweet was an apparent reference to an inspector general’s report about the investigation into the president’s campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Ratcliffe could not be reached immediately for comment Friday.

The announcement comes months after Ratcliffe withdrew from consideration for the job amid claims that he’d exaggerated parts of his biography, like his role as the leader of an immigration crackdown while he was a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Texas. Ratcliffe defended his record last year but said he didn’t want the national security and intelligence debate surrounding his confirmation, “however untrue,” to become a political issue.

Ratcliffe has been a fierce defender of the president during congressional hearings. He gained notoriety for berating former special counsel Robert Mueller during his appearance before the Judiciary Committee. Ratcliffe also defended Trump during impeachment hearings of the president.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tweeted his congratulations to the congressman. Fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Austin called Ratcliffe “a good man” and said in a tweet that he supported the nomination.

The Texas Democratic Party’s executive director, though, said Ratcliffe’s nomination was an insult to the intelligence community and that his “entire claim to fame” was his interchange with Mueller.

“Deeply unqualified and highly partisan, he fits right in with the Trump Administration but the results will be terrible and dangerous for the rest of the country,” state party executive director Manny Garcia said.

If Ratcliffe is confirmed to the post, it could create a vacancy in Texas’ 4th Congressional District. The district, which covers the northeast corner of the state, is safely Republican.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/02/28/us-rep-john-ratcliffe-gets-director-national-intelligence-nomination/.

The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.

bit neglected re gig

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX), President Donald Trump’s newly announced pick to be the next director of National Intelligence overseeing the 17 U.S. intelligence services, doesn’t have much experience in intelligence. Previous occupants of the position have had long careers serving in the U.S. Senate, military, foreign service, or intelligence agencies. By contrast, Ratcliffe, a former U.S. attorney and small town mayor, is a third-term congressman who joined the House Intelligence Committee a scant six months ago.

What Ratcliffe really brings to the table is a willingness to protect Trump from the implications of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by parroting the fantasies of the president's most ardent Fox News defenders.

A few days after interviewing for the job, the congressman benefited from the opportunity to “essentially audition for the president” during Mueller’s Wednesday hearings, The New York Timesreported. If those hearings were Ratcliffe’s audition, then callbacks came Thursday when he used an interview on Fox & Friends, one of the president’s favorite programs, to play the network’s anti-Mueller hits to the audience of one.

On Fox, Ratcliffe claimed that the Mueller report was written by “a bunch of lawyers that didn’t like Donald Trump.” He suggested that the way “Russia really did interfere” with the election was with a “fake dossier” provided to Democrats. And he accused former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey of violating the Espionage Act, adding that the Justice Department probe that Attorney General William Barr has ordered could provide “accountability.”

“The big winner yesterday,” he added at one point, “was Donald Trump, because impeachment is dead."

[vid]

Trump is trying to replace someone who refused to operate in his personal interest with someone who will. Outgoing National Intelligence Director Dan Coats lost the president’s favor by loudly defending the U.S. intelligence service’s conclusion that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump, and he has sounded the alarm that the Kremlin will target the 2020 elections as well. Ratcliffe, meanwhile, has adopted Fox host Sean Hannity’s moronic position that the “real collusion” during the 2016 election was between Russia and the Democrats.

Such a personnel shift can have profound consequences. Trump forced out former Attorney General Jeff Sessions because Sessions was unwilling to use the Justice Department to defend the president and punish his enemies. His replacement, Barr, had publicly indicated that he was willing to do so; as attorney general, Barr opened the investigation into the inception of the Mueller probe that Fox hosts had demanded.

Trump wants a National Intelligence director who will similarly parrot Fox conspiracy theories and use the office to the president’s benefit. In Ratcliffe, he believes he’s found his man.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/top-election-security-official-who-briefed-lawmakers-on-latest-russian-meddling-targeted-for-ouster-by-trump-white-house

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Top election security official who briefed lawmakers on latest Russian meddling targeted for ouster by Trump White House

Image via Screengrab.

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story February 23, 2020

During a discussion on the war on the intelligence community being waged by the Donald Trump’s White House, CNN host Victor Blackwell stated that sources speaking with the network stated that the intel official who briefed lawmakers for both parties on new efforts by Russia to meddle in U.S. elections could be on the way out.

Speaking with contributor Lynn Sweet, Blackwell asked about the so-called “purge” being conducted by the White House.

“It sends the signal once again that President Trump is not a respecter of the United States intelligence services with the bigger issue that a permanent director has not been in that office since last summer when Dan Coates was forced out,” Sweet explained. “This is a key position, subject to Senate confirmation and Trump hasn’t seen fit to have a permanent director for months now.”

“Now, post-impeachment, you also have the issue of whether or not part of his [Richard Grenell’s] role there it is to oversee a purge of people who are not seen as Trump loyalists,” she continued. “All of which goes to the heart of United States intelligence mission which is to get and gather information in a nonpartisan way to brief partisan officials to base their policy decisions on.”

“That’s exactly what Shelby Pierson was doing,” Blackwell said, describing the official who briefed the lawmakers on new Russian overtures. “She is the — this position was just created, she’s the person to oversee election security, going to brief members on the House Intelligence Committee about their assessment that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election. That they have a preference for President Trump.”

“What we’ve learned from sources is that inside the office of the Director of National Intelligence is she could be next to be pushed out of the office,” he added. “What’s the impact of getting rid of that person as we’re about eight months out from elections?”

“It is two levels of answers here, Victor,” Sweet replied. “One, you’re getting rid of a seasoned professional in what would seem like a retaliatory act for putting forth intelligence you don’t like. Again, it goes to the core of what intelligence is for: just to get unvarnished information. If, indeed, she’s presiding over election security issues, that’s the intelligence community needs to be on top of if she does leave. Will the mission still be carried out when election security is a top priority of the United States?”

Watch below:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-to-name-bombastic-loyalist-a-top-intel-chief-despite-lack-of-qualifications-report/

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Trump to name bombastic loyalist as top intel chief despite lack of qualifications: report

Ambassador Richard Grenell with California Wine Representative

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement February 19, 2020

President Donald Trump is expected to install Richard Grenell, his current Ambassador to Germany, as his next Acting Director of National Intelligence, according to The New York Times. Grenell is known as a bombastic Trump loyalist who has not been well received in Berlin.

Some eyebrows are being raised, not due to Grenell’s harsh attitudes but his disturbing lack of qualifications for the job of Director of National Intelligence, also known as the DNI.

The DNI is a Cabinet-level official who sits at the very top of the entire Intelligence Community, serving as the head of the 17 federal agencies that comprise it. They also serve as the President’s chief advisor on national security, and produce the top-secret President’s Daily Brief (PDB).

Federal law states quite clearly, “Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of National Intelligence shall have extensive national security expertise.”

Ambassador to Germany does not qualify. Grenell previously has served as the spokesperson for the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He has run a public affairs consultancy, has been a Fox News contributor, and for a few days was presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s national security spokesperson, but was forced to step down after conservatives blasted the former governor over Grenell’s sexual orientation.

In November the german magazine Der Spiegel ran a damning profile of Grenell titled, “Trump’s Ambassador Finds Few Friends in Germany.” (Ironically, one of the reasons Trump gave for firing his venerated Ambassador to Ukraine was that she was not well-liked in the country, which was false.)

“Since arriving in Berlin as U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell has flouted diplomatic conventions and attempted to interfere in domestic politics. He has since become politically isolated in the German capital,” Der Spiegel reported.

In the extremely “unflattering” article, Grenell is compared to “a right-wing extremist colonial officer.”

“The powerful avoid him. Doors have been shut. Few politicians to the left of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AFD) and the populist-conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), want to be seen with him.”

It gets worse.

Der Spiegel writes they spoke with 30 sources before publishing their report.

“Almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism. His brash demeanor, some claim, hides a deep insecurity, and they say he thirsts for the approval of others.”

All that aside, again, Grenell is not qualified, neither by law nor by common sense.

Some experts agree:

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Garrett M. Graff

@vermontgmg

Reminder: Jim Clapper spent 50 years in intelligence, headed two agencies, and served as the Under Sec of intel at the Pentagon before becoming DNI. Ric Grenell was ... a notably rude Twitter troll. https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/1230262310847029248 …

Maggie Haberman

@maggieNYT

News - President Trump expected to tap Ric Grenell for ODNI https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html …

Joe Cirincione

@Cirincione

This is a national disgrace. Grenell would be the least qualified intelligence chief in US history. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html?referringSource=articleShare …

Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, was expected to be the president’s pick to be acting director of national intelligence.

Trump Expected to Name Richard Grenell as Acting Head of Intelligence

The move would place a Trump loyalist atop the intelligence agencies long viewed skeptically by the White House.

nytimes.com

Steve Vladeck

@steve_vladeck

Because Grenell is Senate-confirmed (as Ambassador to Germany), the President has the authority to name him Acting DNI under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Of course, there'd be no reason not to _nominate_ him to be the actual DNI if he were actually qualified for the job... https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1230262310847029248 …

Maggie Haberman

@maggieNYT

News - President Trump expected to tap Ric Grenell for ODNI https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html …

Josh Moon

@Josh_Moon

The moron running the country is about to appoint the least qualified intelligence director in history - by a wide margin. A move guaranteed to make us less safe as a country. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/dni-national-intelligence-director-grenell.html …

Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, was expected to be the president’s pick to be acting director of national intelligence.

Trump Expected to Name Richard Grenell as Acting Head of Intelligence

The move would place a Trump loyalist atop the intelligence agencies long viewed skeptically by the White House.

nytimes.com

3:29 PM - Feb 19, 2020

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Olivia Gazis

@Olivia_Gazis

Replying to @Olivia_Gazis

Apart from questions about Grenell’s qualifications, temperament and relevant experience for this role, the move also raises questions about the Worldwide Threat Assessment - how soon would a brand new, acting DNI present an annual threat assessment before Congress