Lack of Intelligence

A surprise sacking by Speaker Johnson of the GOP’s chair of the House Intelligence Committee has even Republicans ill at ease.

Trump and his cronies continue to eliminate important guardrails, even from among the ranks of loyal party members.

The latest casualty was the chair of House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH). Speaker Johnson surprised many in his own party, including Turner, by calling him into his office and summarily dismissing him as chair of the Committee and replacing him with a MAGA loyalist.

Responding to reporters, Johnson insisted he remained “a Mike Turner fan” and that “he did a great job” leading the Intelligence Committee, but added that the panel “needs a fresh start.”

“That's what this is about, nothing else,” Johnson said.

That is nonsense, of course. Turner even told his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), that the reasons given for his sacking included “concerns from Mar-a-Lago.” In other words, the firing came from Trump basically telling Speaker Johnson, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome chairman”—if you know the origin story of the phrase, attributed to King Henry II, of how the king gets what he wants without ever having to give the order.

While this may seem like inside political baseball, Turner’s dismissal is a further blow to the separation of powers and has serious national implications, not the least of which is that oversight of U.S. intelligence by the House will now be rendered far less effective or even toothless. It also speaks volumes about what is now required of anyone remaining in an important position within the GOP as Donald Trump cements his hold upon the party.

The abrupt and disrespectful way this was handled, however, may have created a new enemy, or at least an obstacle, for Speaker Johnson in Rep. Turner, at a time when Johnson can afford no dissension within the ranks of the House GOP conference.

Lack of oversight is great if you plan to abuse power

The House Intelligence Committee serves a critical role. It provides an extra check upon the powerful agencies, councils and bureaus that comprise the sprawling U.S. intelligence community, which has a whopping annual budget of $90 billion.

We can best highlight the importance of a functioning check upon U.S. intelligence officials by examining what happens when there isn’t one. In the lead up to the Iraq War, for example, then Vice President Cheney leaned hard on U.S. intelligence to declare that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq that would justify an invasion. The Director of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, was a Bush loyalist. He went along with the bogus claim and went as far as to call it a “slam dunk case,” even though the intelligence community believed there was insufficient supporting evidence. A Senate Report on Iraqi WMD intelligence, produced in 2004, confirmed that many of the pre-war statements by U.S. officials were unsupported by the intelligence that had been gathered. Had the House Intelligence Committee performed adequate oversight, it could have reached the same conclusion, and we might never have gone into Iraq.

House Intelligence Committee oversight may take on added urgency should former representative and newly-minted MAGA mouthpiece Tulsi Gabbard be confirmed as Director of National Intelligence. She will have Trump’s ear on a near daily basis, and it will be up to her to decide which pieces of intelligence to report to the president and which not to elevate. Gabbard is a novice, however, with no relevant intelligence experience. And as I wrote about earlier in The Big Picture, Gabbard is also known for spreading Kremlin propaganda, most notably false claims around U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine and the amplification of bogus justifications for Russia’s unprovoked invasion of its neighbor.

With MAGA loyalists like Gabbard willing to tell Trump only what he wants to hear, and with experienced intelligence leaders like Turner out, there will be no one left to curb Trump’s worst instincts or to warn him when foreign enemies are playing him.

Further, as the ranking Democrat on the Committee, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) pointed out in an interview with Tim Miller of The Bulwark, congressional oversight is particularly important when it comes to the intelligence community. Unlike other departments, where journalists or lawyers can dig around and obtain public records and information through the Freedom of Information Act, information regarding the intelligence services is generally off-limits. Only a few people in Congress are entrusted with keeping and reviewing the nation’s secrets, and they need to be of unimpeachable character, willing to put nation before party.

One of those men was Mike Turner, someone admired by representatives on both sides of the aisle, by the intelligence community, but apparently not by Donald Trump.

One of the last real conservatives

Mike Turner is a true conservative in the classic Republican mold. As Jay Nordlinger of the National Review lamented,

Mike Turner was like a last gasp of the “old” Republican understanding—about dictatorship, democracy, national security, and American values. The new GOP is Tulsi Gabbard and JD Vance. Everything is turned upside down.

(Narrator: It’s really your party that is upside down, sir.)

Rep. Turner opposed the MAGA right on several critical issues, and that no doubt contributed to his downfall. For example, Turner is a staunch supporter of Ukraine, including continued funding of its war efforts. He is also a fan of NATO, even while the Western Alliance has come under constant attack from the right ever since Trump took office.

Turner backed reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a controversial provision that permits intelligence services to spy on Americans indirectly should their communications include emails and texts with foreign spies or agents. (Trump rails against FISA for this very reason.)

Turner also voted to certify the 2020 election, tweeting at the time of the insurrection, “I am appalled at what is occurring in the U.S. Capitol right now. President Trump needs to call for an end to this violence and permit Congress to facilitate a peaceful transition of power.”

Turner later sought to walk a line by voting against the “snap impeachment” of the once and future president, and he recently traveled to Mar-a-Lago with a group of Republican representatives to help burnish his MAGA credentials. But as Nicole Lafond of Talking Points Memo observed, if this was “perhaps in his own bid to get back in Trump’s good graces” then “it was apparently not enough.”

Turner has also been one of the few GOP leaders willing to speak hard truths about the alarming state of his own party, including that Kremlin propaganda is now being parroted by House Republicans. As I noted in a piece last April,

It ought to be far bigger news that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee has admitted that Russian propaganda has now seeped into the base of the Republican party. In a CNN interview over the weekend, Rep. Turner agreed with his party’s chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who blamed conservative media outlets for the fact that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States.” McCaul added that “unfortunately … it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

“Oh, it’s absolutely true,” Turner said of McCaul’s remarks. “We see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.”

“I mean, there are members of Congress today, who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not,” Turner said. “Vladimir Putin having made it very clear, both publicly and to his own population, that his view is that this is a conflict of a much broader claim of Russia, to Eastern Europe, and including claiming all of Ukraine territory as Russia’s.”

Here is the clip of the interview Turner gave on CNN last April that likely set him on a collision course with the pro-Kremlin caucus within the GOP:

Turner’s replacement is Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), who has voted in the past against Ukraine aid. As Norm Ornstein, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, drily noted,”[N]o one is more happy that Johnson has removed Mike Turner than Vladimir Putin.”

The now absent House member

Turner and other committee members are furious about Johnson’s move, deeming Turner’s demotion an unfair blindside.

Even Fox News has noted the rift within the GOP conference. As Chad Pergram, senior congressional correspondent for the network, reported, the level of anger among GOP representatives is noticeable.

“He dragged Mike along,” fumed one senior House Republican[ ]. “It wasn’t a fair process.”

“(Johnson) cost himself some political capital,” said another House Republican.

“Mike’s never going to vote for another f*cking thing around here again,” said one House Republican who asked they not be identified. “He’s mad.”

Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News also confirmed that Johnson’s ouster of Turner “has left him with an *extraordinarily* angry House Intelligence committee.”

A number of other prominent Republicans were also publicly critical of Johnson’s move against Turner. Per reporting by Axios, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), a hawk on the Intelligence Committee, told reporters “we all have questions and concerns” and that Turner's removal “kind of came out of nowhere.” He added, “McCarthy spent a lot of political capital right-sizing and fixing that committee so that it would be what it needed to be. And Johnson, it's not really clear what his plan is.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told Axios that the move “divides the conference, and I don’t think that’s good,” adding that “most of us agree” with Turner on issues like Ukraine and intelligence collection.

“I’m not happy with the decision. I think the vast majority of us are not happy with the decision,” said another House Republican who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Least happy of all is Turner himself, who has begun a protest of sorts: He has now missed two days of House votes, according to Jamie Dupree, who writes the political newsletter Regular Order. Because the House majority is so thin, repeated absences by Turner could impact Johnson’s and Trump’s plans to push through things like their massive budget reconciliation bill along with a lifting of the debt ceiling so they can extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts and slash social safety nets.

Democrats have noted the rift and are even teasing the idea, however far-fetched, of Turner jumping ship. Rep. Jamie Raksin (D-MD) went on Chris Hayes’s show last night on MSNBC and lauded Turner as a “great mayor of Dayton who had a great bipartisan history and base of support” and who came out for an assault weapons ban after a tragic mass shooting in Dayton.

Raskin observed, “The autocrats in Mar-a-Lago don't want him. The autocrats in Moscow don't want him.” Raskin added that Turner is “extremely popular with Democrats, and who knows what's gonna happen at this point.”

I certainly wouldn’t hold my breath for such a miracle, but I would certainly settle for Turner throwing a wrench into every GOP bill through his continued absence or even better a “no” vote.