Former CIA director John Brennan said he is worried about the intelligence community following the ouster of acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.
President Trump announced on Wednesday that Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, would replace Maguire as acting DNI. Critics say he lacks sufficient intelligence experience and is too close to Trump.
In a Friday morning appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Brennan called the personnel move “a virtual decapitation of the intelligence community” and suggested that intelligence professionals should “see this as yet one more example that they are not being allowed to do their job.”
Brennan, who worked under three Democratic and three Republican administrations, also claimed the Trump administration does not “want the intelligence community to do its work — to the executive branch as well as to the legislative branch. But what we’re seeing now is such an anomaly, such an aberration from what we have seen in the past, about the importance of the independence of the intelligence community.”
There have been reports that Maguire was forced out of his position as a result of one of his aides, Shelby Pierson, giving a classified briefing to the House Intelligence Committee about Russian interference in the 2020 election. During the briefing, which took place last week, the committee was informed that Russia is trying to interfere in the upcoming presidential election in order to get Trump reelected.
The acting deputy to Maguire, Andrew Hallman, will step down on Friday, according to the New York Times.
