The Morning Briefing: Spooks Testify about RUSSIA, Schiff's Memo and Much, Much More

Good Wednesday morning.

Here is what’s on the president’s agenda today:

In the morning, the president receives his daily intelligence briefing.
Later the president meets with bipartisan members of Congress on infrastructure.
In the afternoon, the president participates in a working session regarding the Opportunity Zones provided by tax reform.
The president will sign H.R. 4708, the DHS Blue Campaign Authorization Act and S. 534, the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Assault and Safe Sport Authorization Act

Spooks testify before Congress

Yesterday, all the head spooks appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was a real alphabet soup — participants included the CIA (Pompeo), FBI (Wray), NSA (Rogers), DNI (Coats), and others. As expected, one of the main themes of the spook testimony was RUSSIAN interference in our electoral process. Another theme of the testimony (from the Democrats) was that President Trump does not take RUSSIAN election interference seriously. The WaPo tells us, “Their [spooks] assessment stands in contrast to President Trump, who has repeatedly voiced skepticism of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.” That’s not from any witnesses, that’s just the WaPo editorializing.

In order to talk about the 2016 election, it’s important to remember two things: First, that no one thought President Trump would win the 2016 election, even the RUSSIANS. Second, RUSSIA’S purpose with the 2016 election was to cause chaos and undermine the presumed victrix, Hillary. Now it turns out that Hillary lost and Trump won, but they still want to destabilize the U.S. Who are the people furthering the RUSSIAN goals of chaos, division and undermining the president? The media, the left, and the crazy never-Trump people.

I watched most of this hearing and I did not see any of these agency heads testify that President Trump is not taking the RUSSIAN threat seriously or ordering them to ignore threats to our election processes. In fact, the WaPo reports, “Pompeo added that Trump ‘has made very clear we have an obligation’ to make sure policymakers have a deep understanding of the Russia threat.” So all the claptrap about President Trump trying to stop the intel agencies from doing their job regarding the RUSSIA threat is just the left’s propaganda to undermine the president.

Said DNI Coats:

Coats said that Russia will continue using propaganda, false personas and social media to undermine the upcoming election.

“There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts” to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign “as successful and views the 2018 midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” said Coats, the leader of the U.S. government’s 17 intelligence agencies.

Pompeo (CIA) also denied the reports last week that the NSA lost $100k attempting to retrieve stolen cyberweapons and obtain naked pictures of President Trump. “Pompeo categorically denied that the intelligence agency had paid any such money, directly or indirectly. He claimed that the newspaper had been duped by the same person trying to sell the U.S. government information that turned out to be bogus.”

The committee also met with the spooks in a closed, classified hearing after the public event.

Leaker Adam Schiff: I won’t make changes to my memo

Last Friday, the president returned the Democrats’ FISA abuse memo response with a list of objections and edits from the DOJ and FBI before the memo can be made public. The Democrats specifically included objectionable material in their response memo so they could claim that the president was censoring their idiot document. This was all predicted. It’s Wednesday, and these lazy, overpaid congressmen have still not gotten their act together to make the changes so their memo can be released. And yet, they shriek how important it is they get their memo out.

“We’re not going to make any revisions to it,” Schiff said Tuesday. “The only question is what redaction will be made. And obviously we’d like to keep those to a minimum.”

Related: BuzzFeed sues DNC

WH story on alleged wife beater Rob Porter getting more convoluted

Yesterday, in the spook Hill testimony, FBI director Wray was asked about the Rob Porter background check. Porter resigned or was fired from his senior position as staff secretary after credible allegations of violence made by his ex-wives were revealed. Inquiring minds want to know if the White House knew Porter had been accused of beating up his ex-wives and if they knew he would not be able to get a security clearance. Porter’s job included handling classified materials.

Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the FBI completed its background investigation of Porter “in late July.” The FBI then responded to requests for follow up information in November, and finally “administratively closed the file in January … earlier this month we received some additional information and we passed that along as well,” Wray said.

The WH had previously said Porter’s background check hadn’t been completed and upon learning of the allegations, they took action against Porter. The stories don’t match up and the WH looks really bad here. Really bad.

What a mess.

Olympic picture of the day:

Shaun White, of the United States, celebrates his gold medal after the men’s halfpipe finals at Phoenix Snow Park at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Other morsels:

Civil rights group sues Southwest Airlines on behalf of Muslim man removed from flight

USDA proposes replacing food stamps with delivery service, increase work requirements

Big news: Top GOP Senate recruit in North Dakota may run after all, challenging Democrat Heitkamp

School Under Fire for Telling Girls They MUST Dance with Boys

Vice sued for alleged gender-based pay discrimination

Second judge blocks Trump administration from ending DACA

WH official to WaPo: Kelly handling of Porter saga ‘amounts to dereliction of duty’

Olympic Figure Skaters Credit God In Unlikely Return To Ice

‘The View’ star Joy Behar mocks Mike Pence’s Christian faith: ‘That’s called mental illness’

Schumer Finally Confirms Federal Rail Administrator After Horrific Run Of Amtrak Crashes

Teen girls charged with killing pet birds, smearing bird blood everywhere after breaking into classmate’s home