All posts tagged "John Ratcliffe"

CIA Director John Ratcliffe's secret trip to Russia came at the personal direction of President Donald Trump while senior White House aides were kept in the dark.

According to a Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal, the covert diplomatic mission to Moscow was tightly held as Trump dispatched his top spy to carry a message to top Kremlin figures. Trump's move bypassed aides and military brass who would ordinarily be looped in beforehand, The Journal noted.

The choice to send Ratcliffe as an envoy also marked a shift, The Journal pointed out. Earlier rounds of talks were led by other Trump confidants but failed to halt the fighting in Ukraine. Trump then turned to Ratcliffe, according to anonymous U.S. officials who talked to The Journal....

When asked who really has the president's ear when it comes to potentially striking Iran, one former Republican lawmaker listed a couple of names he would find troubling.

Former "Tea Party" Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman (VA), who is also a military veteran and former Jan. 6 committee adviser, appeared on MSNBC on Saturday, and was asked about who Trump is listening to on these global military issues.

The question comes in light of reports that certain top Trump Cabinet officials, including Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, are being sidelined....

Sen. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) came down hard on witnesses testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday who still refused to call the information leaked through a Signal group chat "classified."

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and director of the National Security Agency Timothy Haugh answered the Senate's questions Wednesday, a day after the House Intelligence Committee demanded answers.

Ever since The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published his story about the sensitive "war plans" detailing a bombing run on Yemen that he witnessed after being mysteriously added to the group chat, the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers have maintained that the information was not classified and that Goldberg was perpetuating a "hoax." ...

Ever since the Trump administration started denying that the information on a Yemen bombing raid that was leaked on a messaging app was "classified," some officials and journalists have called for The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg to publish the entire exchange that took place amongst top defense officials.

Goldberg's bombshell article, released Monday, with the title, "The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans," claimed, "U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling."

Within hours, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted, "No 'war plans' were discussed," and added, "No classified material was sent to the thread."...

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tried to steer a interview with CNN's Boris Sanchez away from the big story of the day — whether there should be consequences for the war plan chat about an airstrike on Yemen with top defense officials that inadvertently included a journalist.

But Sanchez wasn't having it.

The anchor had asked why senior officials like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe should have discussed the details of a sensitive bombing operation outside of classified government computer systems. ...

Neither the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard nor CIA Director John Ratcliffe would give definitive answers on the Signal war plans leak that dominated Tuesday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Gabbard refused to confirm that she was even on the group chat, while neither she nor Ratcliffe would confirm whether the nature of the information shared were either "war plans" or "classified."

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) posted to X, "YA’LL!!!! What is wrong with these people?! @ODNI Director Gabbard refuses to say whether or not it was on a private or issued phone. … AND @CIADirector Ratcliffe is trying to get his mind right— 'I think that’s consistent with my recollection.'"...