A top Republican called attention to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s warning to President Trump about crossing the intelligence community.
Rep. Andy Biggs recalled a quote by Schumer after details of former national security adviser John Bolton’s book, a draft of which was submitted to the National Security Council for a review, leaked to the media, and shook up the impeachment debate over calling witnesses.
“As more leaks & hearsay are ushered into the #ImpeachmentTrial, remember Chuck Schumer’s warning about the revenge of the intel community,” the Arizona Republican said in a tweet Monday.
As more leaks & hearsay are ushered into the #ImpeachmentTrial, remember Chuck Schumer’s warning about the revenge of the intel community:
“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” https://t.co/McMZdQTWfw
— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) January 27, 2020
He quoted Schumer’s suggestion to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in early January 2017 that intelligence officials have ways to strike back after Trump, then the president-elect, alleged there was a delay in his briefing on “so-called Russian hacking.”
“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” the New York Democrat said after Maddow informed him that intelligence sources told NBC News that the briefing had not actually been delayed.
“So, even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this,” he added.
Biggs, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and a vocal defender of the president, also shared a Breitbart News report that cited a source who said Army Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, a senior ethics lawyer for the National Security Council, is the official in charge of reviewing manuscripts by current and former NSC officials. Vindman is the identical twin brother of Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, another member of the NSC who testified during House impeachment proceedings that he raised national security concerns about Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to a report by the New York Times late Sunday, Bolton wrote in a draft that Trump told him in August that a hold on nearly $400 million in congressionally approved military aid was tied to his efforts to pressure Kyiv into assisting with investigations into his political rivals, including presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump, who faces two Ukraine-related articles of impeachment, denied telling Bolton that the security aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations.
“If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book,” he tweeted just after midnight on Monday.
The report quickly stirred up speculation about who was behind the leak, which broke out during the Senate impeachment trial. Democrats have used the disclosure to push moderate Republican senators to vote in favor of summoning Bolton and other Trump administration officials to testify.
Bolton left the White House in September and announced earlier this month that he was willing to testify in the Senate impeachment trial if subpoenaed by lawmakers. Trump signaled that he would block Bolton from testifying, claiming it would be to protect executive privilege for himself and future presidents.
Sarah Tinsley, an adviser to Bolton, said that the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations sent the draft manuscript to the White House weeks ago for a prepublication review by the NSC. “The ambassador has not passed the draft manuscript to anyone else. Period,” she said.
Bolton’s attorney, Charles Cooper, also released a statement decrying a “corrupted” review process and shared a copy of a cover letter showing the draft was submitted to the NSC’s Records Management Division for a standard prepublication security review for classified information on Dec. 30.
On Monday, Bolton and his publisher denied allegations that they leaked excerpts of his book to the New York Times.
