Background Briefing: February 2, 2020
The New DNI Will Cover Up Russian Election Interference
We begin with Trump’s nominee to be the next acting Director of National intelligence, Richard Grenell, the current U.S. Ambassador to Germany who is a combative right-wing ideologue and has proven to be an utter failure by any diplomatic measure having given aid and comfort to neo-Nazis and right wing radicals in Europe prompting German leaders and officials to close doors around this ugly American. Now this latest addition to the Trump wrecking crew will be able to shape and spin the flow of intelligence that reaches the public covering up unpleasant realities while manufacturing justifications for Trump’s actions. A veteran CIA officer Robert Baer joins us to assess the dangers ahead with a far-right political operative with no intelligence experience or competence in charge of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. Grenell will be able to cover up expected Russian interference in the upcoming election to protect the boss and help him get reelected without as the U.S. Intelligent Community determined there was in 2016, Putin’s fingerprints all over Trump’s victory. In effect we will have a propagandist spin facts and reshape the global reality to placate Trump’s domestic audience and feed the delusion that their leader is making America great again instead of weakening the country and empowering its adversaries. As recently as February 13 intelligence officials briefed House lawmakers warning Russia is interfering in the 2020 campaign to get Trump reelected, a disclosure that angered Trump, but one that will not happen once Richard Grenell is the DNI.
Roger Stone Gets 40 Months as Trump’s Pardon Awaits
Then we speak with a leading expert on white-collar crime about today’s sentencing of Roger Stone to 40 months is jail which followed a slew of pardons Trump just handed out, prompting many to expect Stone will soon be pardoned by his long-time friend who has already leaned on the AG to have Stone’s sentence reduced. Henry Pontell, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, joins us to discuss Trump’s continuing assault on the law to condition the public to believe that the crimes he and his cronies are committing are no big deal and that instead they are being persecuted by the “deep state” for their politics not their criminality.
Trump Fires a Top Pentagon Official for Speaking Truth
Then finally we speak with Lawrence Korb, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense about the firing by Trump of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood who last May testified to Congress that Ukraine had made sufficient progress in cleaning up corruption to receive the hundreds of millions of congressionally-appropriated military aid that Trump was blocking. This following the recent firing of Colonel Vindman who was escorted out of the White House with similar career-ending vindictiveness for speaking truth with neither being protected by the Secretary of Defense who like his West Point classmate Mike Pompeo, failed to stand up for his troops.