March 10, 2020

Richard Grenell, Profile in Courage

Kay Nietfeld/DPA via ZUMA

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Our loyalist nominee to head up the intelligence community has begged off testifying before Congress:

Acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell has declined to appear before Congress on Tuesday to speak about foreign election threats….[Grenell] asked President Trump to be excused from the briefings because he anticipated pointed questions from Democrats about politically volatile subjects — such as intelligence assessments that Russia is once more interfering in U.S. politics.

But wait. There’s more:

The intelligence community’s top counterintelligence official, William Evanina, will appear instead….Grenell’s name had been included in a list of briefers given to Congress on Feb. 27 and again Monday, people familiar with the matter said….The latest list of briefers, provided to Congress on Tuesday morning, included Evanina in lieu of Grenell.

It’s not just that Grenell is afraid of Trump being pissed off if the truth happens to emerge during today’s testimony. He’s specifically afraid that Trump will be pissed off at whoever happens to deliver the truth. So he fobbed it off on someone else. A true profile in courage.

HERE ARE THE FACTS:

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ONE MORE QUICK THING:

Our fall fundraising drive is off to a rough start, and we very much need to raise $250,000 in the next couple of weeks. If you value the journalism you get from Mother Jones, please help us do it with a donation today.

As we wrote over the summer, traffic has been down at Mother Jones and a lot of sites with many people thinking news is less important now that Donald Trump is no longer president. But if you're reading this, you're not one of those people, and we're hoping we can rally support from folks like you who really get why our reporting matters right now. And that's how it's always worked: For 45 years now, a relatively small group of readers (compared to everyone we reach) who pitch in from time to time has allowed Mother Jones to do the type of journalism the moment demands and keep it free for everyone else.

Please pitch in with a donation during our fall fundraising drive if you can. We can't afford to come up short, and there's still a long way to go by November 5.

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