Jamil Jaffer:
Well, look, I mean, obviously, these are nominees that the president believes in and supports as of today. Whether he maintains his support for somebody like Tulsi Gabbard down the road, under pressure from the Senate, we will see.
But if both of these individuals are confirmed, in particular, Gabbard at DNI, I think you’re going to see concerns amongst the intelligence community about whether they can trust somebody in that position who’s defended a thief of government information, a traitor like Edward Snowden, somebody who said that the most — single most critical intelligence community collection tool, Section 702, is something that should not be reauthorized.
She’s changed her position on that in the last few weeks, but that was her position for a long time. Somebody who’s cozied up to a dictator like Bashar Assad, who used chemical weapons against his own people. She’s questioned the credibility of intelligence that demonstrates he used gas against his own people. So these are hard questions.
And with Kash Patel, right, look, this is somebody who served in the Justice Department at the National Security Division. He knows the space. At the same time, he wrote a book entitled “Government Gangster.” He wrote a book listing a bunch of executive branch officials which he says are members of the deep state, including nearly a dozen members of the Trump administration itself, Bill Barr, Alyssa Farah, folks like that.
And so — Pat Cipollone, who I know from the Justice Department. These are people who served in the Bush administration, in the White House, the Justice Department, elsewhere. And so you have got to say, are these the right kind of people that President Trump wants to put in place? He said they are. We will see what the Senate does about it.
But I do think, particularly with Gabbard, he’s going to come under significant pressure to address that nomination.
