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.

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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