The outgoing director of national intelligence spent his last days on the job bragging about unproven firings, per the New York Times.Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, is expected to be replaced on Tuesday by Jay Clayton after a short-lived stint as President Donald Trump's spy chief. During his last days and hours on the job, Pulte bragged that he reduced staff at the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI), a claim ex-officials doubt, according to reporting by the Times.The Times noted a "flurry of social media posts" by Pulte. In a Tuesday post on X, he wrote, "We are, this morning, Executing a 5th and near final round of Terminations, an approximately 30 percent Staff Reduction from Weeks ago."However, Pulte's office provided "no details" about the firings, the Times noted. Several former U.S. intelligence officials told the Times that they don't believe his claims of a reduction."The acting DNI has been quick to announce firings and make public claims about them, but has so far declined to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with the information necessary to assess the accuracy of those statements or the basis for those decisions," Rachel Cohen, a spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), told the Times. Warner is the top Democrat on the committee.Other former officials told the Times that Pulte was counting people who completed their tour of duty at the ODNI and were returning to their home agencies as planned. He also appeared to have been counting unfilled positions at the National Counterterrorism Center and other parts of the ODNI as part of the terminations, per the Times.
Senator John Cornyn is continuing his anti-Trump crusade after losing the Texas Senate primary to Ken Paxton earlier this year.
The post RINO Cornyn Whines About Push to Cancel August Recess Over SAVE America Act, Attacks Blanche (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
In years’ worth of journal entries, Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote about the uncertainty surrounding the origins of COVID-19, the media attention he received during the pandemic and his “unique” relationship with President Trump. The office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released the entries, which Fauci wrote while he led the National Institute of Allergy and…
Dr. Anthony Fauci used the pandemic to become a celebrity and raise his own profile, proving that having a title and a laundry list of credentials does not mean that someone should simply be trusted as an “expert.” The revelations from Fauci’s diary and emails show a man obsessed with turning the uncertainty and fear […]
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has released more than 1,100 pages of "Tony's Diary" — Dr. Anthony Fauci's personal record from the COVID era — ahead of Fauci's testimony Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.Amid entries on virus origins, case counts, and infighting with the Trump White House, the name of one particular "pretty woman" recurs with striking regularity: Julia Roberts. 'She ... said that every time she sees me her throat gets dry and she gets nervous.'Fauci wrote her name at least seven times across the released pages.On May 13, 2020, Fauci wrote up an Instagram Live arranged by the ONE Campaign. Roberts, he said, put her hands over her mouth when he appeared on screen and gasped, "Oh my God. It's Dr. Fauci; he is here," before telling him he was her personal hero.A clip of their conversation shows Roberts describing Fauci as "maybe the coolest man on the planet" and a "true north, I think, for a lot of people."He was a little starstruck himself. "She was absolutely fabulous," Fauci wrote of Roberts.The two went on to discuss COVID-19's toll on the developing world. He described her as "totally down to earth" and closed the entry with, "Great experience!!"RELATED: Diaries expose Fauci obsessing over his own fame during height of COVID as millions died Amy Sussman/Getty ImagesIn an entry dated October 14, 2020, that otherwise concerns a case surge across 30-plus states and a dispute with Dr. Scott Atlas over herd immunity, Fauci wedged in: "A FEW DAYS AGO, Julia Roberts sent me [a] beautiful flower arrangement. I emailed her my thanks."On February 10, 2021, Fauci wrote about Roberts presenting him amfAR's Award of Courage virtually from her California breakfast room. "When my image came up on the screen she gasped and said that every time she sees me her throat gets dry and she gets nervous and excused herself to go into the kitchen and get a glass of water," he wrote.He also called her "charming, natural, fun, and amazingly beautiful."RELATED: Fauci diary bombshells: Glenn Beck dives into wildest lines from his just-released entries Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThe Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee obtained Fauci's diary as part of its ongoing investigation into COVID-19 and federally funded gain-of-function research. Fauci declined to testify voluntarily this time, so the committee subpoenaed him for the Wednesday hearing.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here. Anthony Fauci’s diary musing about dinners with famed journalists during […]
A top immigration policy expert accused a right-wing online news source of spreading an “outrageous lie” on Monday about the US Department of Homeland Security’s top statistician, who resigned over the weekend and cited President Donald Trump’s “war on immigrants” as a major reason for his departure.America First Post wrote in a post on social media that Marc Rosenblum, who until recently was the executive director of the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS), “easily could’ve been underreporting deportations or illegal populations, ruining data.”Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, countered that Rosenblum sought under both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration to publish “the most transparent data on immigration enforcement ever; monthly information on [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection] arrests and removals, stuff that had NEVER been published before.”Such data has not been published since the first days of Trump’s second term in the White House, said Reichlin-Melnick, as the president has ramped up deportation operations and federal agents have violently carried out his anti-immigration agenda—arresting more than 10,000 people in a recent five-day span and killing at least 11 people during enforcement operations.In a post on LinkedIn, Rosenblum wrote that over 10 years, the team he managed at OHSS grew from 11 people to 45 people under the Biden administration.“We matured official data processing to update monthly,” wrote Rosenblum. “We launched new lines of daily and weekly internal reports. We massively expanded our analytic capacity.”“My OHSS co-workers are outstanding career federal civil servants. They are smart, mission-focused experts who produce high-quality results in a challenging and often hostile work environment,” he continued. “But it will come as no surprise that I’m thrilled to end my relationship with the current administration. Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption), I just need a change.”Daniel Delgado, a former DHS deputy assistant secretary for immigration policy, said the department was “far better off for the work that Marc accomplished, no matter how hard the current incompetent leadership try to hide it.”David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute—which has found that the majority of immigration arrests made last year were of people who had no criminal convictions—told NOTUS last November that under the Trump administration, DHS was providing “no accountability, no way to assess, no public understanding about what’s really going on that is not curated by a press release from the agency.”Reichlin-Melnick has also frequently spoken out about the lack of data being publicly released by DHS to back up its claims about immigration arrests.While DHS has repeatedly claimed in public statements that its agents are getting “the worst of the worst off our streets,” the agency’s own “Worst of the Worst” database released late last year showed less than 10,000 people who had been arrested—a tiny fraction of the 220,000 people who had been detained by federal agents up to that point.“Marc Rosenblum was one of the most dedicated civil servants I’ve ever met, a man who spent his career working to get DHS to share more data,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “Since Trump took office last year, his office has been repeatedly blocked from sharing previously public data.”
