← The Bulwark
Loading summary
Transcript16 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor of the Bulwark. And I'm joined by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who is here to talk about, among other things, Bill Pulte and the Iran War. Senator, thanks for doing this, really appreciate it. I know your time is tight.
- [00:12]
B
Thank you.
- [00:12]
A
Let's start with Bill Pulte, who is now dni. We have some reports that he has begun what is being described essentially as a purge of staffers there, but I'm not sure how reliable to take those reports. And you are high up in the intel oversight. What do you know about where things stand at dni?
- [00:35]
B
Well, Sam, first of all, thank goodness he's only acting dni, which by the way, there is no such thing as an acting dni. The DNI leads. The number two is supposed to go up, but again, Trump skipped the rules. And your basic question, we don't have an answer. I've been, I've been trying to get, I don't think they're my Republican friends. There was a rumor that he was going to start a bunch of firings. Then he supposedly changed his mind, but we don't know. And it sure as hell didn't take long for him to start to go in and screw things up if he's already started firings. And the two things that have been reported, that makes me very nervous and again confirms all of my worst instincts about this guy is number one, he didn't even know and he wanted to take the Presidential Daily Brief, which has got our most classified information home at night, which is against the law. And, you know, anybody in the intel world knows you can't take a classified document about that out. And secondly, in a classic Trumpian fashion, one of his first question he asked is, does he get a private plane? Because he needs a private government paid for taxpayer plane to fly between D.C. chicago and Florida where he can be close to President Trump. So this guy I think is a national security threat, but we don't know about the firing ship.
- [01:53]
A
Does he get the plane? Do we know that?
- [01:54]
B
I, I imagine he'll get the plane.
- [01:57]
A
Okay.
- [01:57]
B
You know, the Director of National Intelligence, usually the Senate confirmed ones get him. But this guy, who, by the way, you know, third generation rich kid, it is, it is one of the reasons why, you know, this was not a classic Democrats versus Republicans. All of the reasonable Senate Republicans were equally afraid of Pulte going into this job.
- [02:19]
A
Yeah, I want to talk about that because your colleague on the intel committee, Tom Cot, basically said, let's forge ahead with Jay Clayton, I should just stress for the viewers Jay Clayton is the actual, we think, nominee. We don't know, actually. I'm curious where you believe things stand. He was, for a brief period of time at least, Trump's pick to take over at dni, Tom Cotton said, let's go ahead with the nomination. Let's have the hearings. Even though Trump had threatened to pull back Clinton's nomination, Clinton did not show up for those hearings at Trump's direction, it seems. So what is the latest on where Jay Clayton's nomination stands?
- [02:56]
B
Sam I'm going to look pretty, a little wacky to your audience. That's a great question.
- [03:02]
A
You're the vice chairman of the committee.
- [03:04]
B
Hey, I'm vice chairman. I hope to be chairman. But here's again to first of all, stress your point because people were concerned about Pulte Jay Clayton, who many Democrats would probably voted against. I might have voted against, depending on his answers, but at least he had qualifications. I've known the guy. I think he would respect the Constitution. And Trump pulled him even though he was a nominee because we were going to prove him really quickly because responsible people in both parties didn't want Pulte to go in to this job. So we don't know. And I, I can say with 100% assurance that as of yesterday, Jay Clayton didn't know. Is his nomination still pending? When's he going to get approval to come up and have the hearing? It is beyond wacky.
- [03:53]
A
Have you heard from the administration of an administration official or even Bill Pulte in the past couple days about where, what he's doing there and what the process is going to be to replace him?
- [04:05]
B
Sam that's again, a very valid question. And Jim Himes, my counterpart in the House, we wrote Pulte yesterday and said, you know, remember the law. Don't go in there. You're, you've not been congressionally approved. You're only acting. And that even is not a legal status. So you can't go out and start firing people or changing policy. We have not received a response to that. We've not heard from Pulte directly. I don't believe any of the Republicans have either. This is a Trump selection that I think again cause chaos. And in my mind it also just reflects the fact that at the end of the day, I don't think the president really cares that much about American national security by putting somebody so incompetent. And then, for example, part of this was all tied up in a renewal of a controversial program anyway. Called section 702 of the FISA bill, which is always controversial. And Trump Suddenly at the 11th hour also said, well, he's not even going to renew 702 unless the SAVE act, which is that voter disenfranchisement law that all the Democrats and even some Republicans are categorically against. So the idea that he's going to play, you know, as a political playing card, national security is pretty outrageous. The only caveat on that I put is that thank goodness the communication providers are still working with the government. So the Even though the 702 had a tail on it and we were just uncertain, we're 12 days in, I think, where it's not been renewed, but nothing has happened yet. We have not, thank goodness, gone dark on collecting information about bad guys, particularly with, again, the World cup going on in the July 4th coming.
- [05:49]
A
One question on DNI and then I want to switch to Iran. But the predecessor in this post, Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned fairly recently. You're smiling, but I assume you saw the Washington Post article. And just for people who didn't, it was a fairly gripping and also pretty comprehensive treatment of the possibility that she was under some sort of directive or influenced by a cult. I mean, that's just what it is, a Hare Krishna cult in Hawaii. They, they detailed with incredible specificity how she would take positions at the behest of what appeared to be a cult leader. Obviously, no one was quite fully aware of the extent to this, but I, I need to ask, did you have had you heard rumblings about this and now that it's happened, to what degree are you going to look into whether or not a cult leader may have influenced our chief intelligence officer? I can't believe I have to ask that, but I do.
- [06:49]
B
Well, the unfortunate thing is, Sam, you know, not at the level of detail of the story because it had literally receipts, but we were aware that she was part of this cult. And, you know, my friend Senor Schatz from Hawaii, you know, was very familiar with this. It was part of her, but she never denied it was part of her public record, the level. So we went at that. Again, people are understandably reluctant to appear to be attacking someone's faith, but this goes so far beyond her personal faith and particularly since the leader of this cult was still communicating or having his agents communicate with the director of National Intelligence on a regular, almost daily basis. It's, again, pretty chilling. I've got so many questions. It appeared the Washington Post had that story for some time. One of the reporters had literally left a couple months ago. Why they didn't publish it beforehand. Is this again the new ownership in Bezos kowtowing to the administration? Was this the reason she left? We've got a lot of questions. I've talked to a couple of my colleagues about how we can pursue this again. This was a case where there was a lot of trepidation on the Republican side about her in the first place. We got very close to not having her confirmed, but a lot of Republicans held their nose and voted for. But we warned ahead of time that this kind of stuff could happen.