Earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray
said in public testimony that Russia was meddling in the 2020 election.
So how to explain President Donald Trump’s decision to fire Acting
Director of National Intelligence Adm. Joseph Maguire after Maguire
defended a subordinate who had briefed Congress on much the same thing?
One
important difference provides the answer. Maguire’s aide, Shelby
Pierson, who heads the DNI’s election security unit, told the House
Intelligence Committee last week that it was the consensus assessment of
the CIA, National Security Agency, and FBI that Russian hackers aren’t
just meddling in this year’s U.S. elections, they’re trying to help
Trump win re-election, two officials familiar with the testimony tell
TIME.
In doing so, Pierson delivered on the
core competence of intelligence agencies: explaining not just what
foreign adversaries and allies are doing, but why they’re doing it. “The
mission of the Intelligence Community is to seek to reduce the
uncertainty surrounding foreign activities, capabilities, or leaders’
intentions,” as the famous Jan. 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community
Assessment of Russia’s 2016 meddling declared at its start.
In other words, Trump is objecting not to the facts his top intelligence experts are presenting, but to the truth they reveal.
Trump,
both officials said, was angered that Maguire had allowed Pierson to
brief members of the House Intelligence Committee on what officials at
the three agencies assess is an ongoing Russian effort to meddle in the
2020 presidential election in an effort to help Trump.
The
Russians are also meddling in Congressional races, aiding some
Republican candidates and targeting some Democratic ones, the officials
say. “The Russians understand our system, and they know that the
President needs the Senate to remain in friendly hands in order to carry
out his agenda,” one of the officials said.
The
DNI’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Maguire’s
departure and congressional briefings on election security. The details
of Pierson’s testimony were first reported by the New York Times.
Trump’s
reaction to hard truths is not exactly new. Over three years, he has
repeatedly rejected intelligence findings about Russian political
hacking, instead accepting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim the
Russia has not interfered in U.S. elections and blaming Ukraine for the
hacking.
And Russian election meddling is
not the only area where Trump doesn’t want to hear the conclusions of
his top spies. For weeks now, officials in the country’s intelligence
agencies, and in oversight committees on Capitol Hill, have been trying
to determine fate of the intelligence community’s annual Worldwide
Threat Assessment. TimeCom