The Deep State Strikes Back!

Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to make war against the deep state. Now it seems the first battle may take place on home ground: the White House.

Congressional and intelligence sources tell Tablet that the candidate slotted in for the top intelligence spot on the National Security Council is ill suited to serve the president’s agenda. Adam Howard, reportedly the front-runner for the NSC’s senior director for intelligence, is currently staff director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Republican Congressman Mike Turner. According to several current congressional sources, multiple House members have raised concern over an alleged boast made by Turner on Capitol Hill that he’s “taking over Trump’s IC [Intelligence Community].” Presumably, Howard is meant to be his instrument.

On Sunday, Joshua Steinman, an NSC official from the first Trump administration, posted a long thread on X reporting that the current NSC is being staffed with holdovers from the Joe Biden administration and others unlikely to serve Trump’s agenda, including Howard, whose intelligence experience is limited to the two years he’s served as HPSCI staff director. Biden’s senior director for intelligence is Maher Bitar, an anti-Israel activist once affiliated with the Students for Justice in Palestine. Bitar also came from HPSCI, where he worked under then-Congressman now-Sen. Adam Schiff, one of Trump’s most vocal opponents on Capitol Hill.

“Without an operational intelligence background, you can’t clean up the mess made by the current [Biden] team,” wrote Steinman.

The NSC’s senior director for intelligence is the president’s interlocutor with the 18 intelligence agencies that make up the IC and ensures that the president’s initiatives are being fulfilled. The senior director administrates all covert action programs on behalf of the president and controls all classified information flow to and from the White House, most significantly the Presidential Daily Brief. He also has IC-wide oversight responsibility.

And yet, say congressional sources, Turner and his deputy Howard have over the past year neglected their constitutionally mandated oversight duties and instead covered for the IC. The sources say that they have impeded efforts to investigate anything that might have embarrassed Biden administration intelligence officials. When reached by Tablet, an HPSCI spokesman declined to comment for the record.

“[Is Howard] willing to expose IC dirty tricks targeting the President?” Steinman asked in his X thread. He was not outlining a hypothetical but rather referring to the NSC’s work in the first Trump White House uncovering the surveillance of the president and his aides. After the 2016 election, NSC staffers found that Obama officials had unmasked the names of transition team officials in transcripts of foreign intelligence intercepts, most notably Gen. Michael Flynn. Trump’s onetime national security adviser was unmasked by at least 40 Obama officials—including now President Joe Biden.

The unlawful leak to the media of Flynn’s phone conversation with Russia’s U.S. ambassador led first to the combat veteran’s departure from the White House and subsequently the special counsel investigation that hobbled the first half of Trump’s first term in office. NSC holdovers from the Obama administration bogged down the Trump team and one holdover, CIA official Eric Ciaramella, teed up the first impeachment of Trump.

Turner in fact was excellent during the impeachment process, using the televised hearings to defend the president and break down Schiff’s anti-Trump witnesses. After Turner took over the committee, he was reportedly keen to reset relations with Schiff and the Democrats and move toward bipartisanship. The problem is that it’s hard to have comity with a faction led by an ambitious activist like Schiff who saw the committee as a political weapon to target opponents.

There’s a lot riding on the current NSC starting off on the strongest possible footing and with an eye to defending a commander in chief certain to be in the deep state’s crosshairs. Steinman concluded his thread with the observation that if the new intel director “isn’t 100% on board with the Trump Agenda, we are in for trouble.”

The day after Steinman’s post, incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz wrote on Twitter, apparently responding to Steinman’s allegations, that “anyone working under President Trump in the NSC will be fully aligned with his America First agenda. Any rumors or suggestions to the contrary are fake news and a distraction from the mission. We will clear the decks to Make America Great Again.”

Waltz, a retired colonel in the National Guard and a combat-decorated Green Beret, served on the House Intelligence Committee and is perfectly aligned with Trump’s priorities on the threats facing America—China, Russia, and Iran. He wrote to Tablet: “I will not be bringing any personnel—political appointees or detailees—who are not in line with the President’s agenda. Additionally, detailees will be dismissed on day one pending an assessment of President Trump and the NSC’s priorities.”

Steinman isn’t the only one who thinks Adam Howard doesn’t fit the bill.

After HPSCI finished its report on cases of sexual assault at the CIA, it was released only after victims complained. The victims have continued to raise concerns that the CIA has not been held accountable, and the House report seemingly praised CIA leadership and allocated more resources to the Agency to stop employees from sexually assaulting their colleagues. The report reasoned that the CIA was “unable to appropriately address the challenges due to its lack of certain tools and authorities. The Committee sought to provide CIA with what it needs to fix these gaps in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024.”

According to Senate sources, with the 2024 Intelligence Authorization Act, Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans were keen to cut all funding for DEI programs across the IC and limit DEI management positions, and successfully did so in their version of the bill. But since Turner and his staff were willing to satisfy the Biden administration’s requests, the disparity weakened the GOP Senate’s provisions and the final bill.

Perhaps most oddly, Turner and Howard spooked the country with a vague warning of a security threat to prevent consideration of reforms to 702, the authority for the warrantless bulk data collection of American communications. When 702 was up for reauthorization in spring 2024, House Speaker Mike Johnson wanted to give the Judiciary Committee the opportunity to make amendments protecting U.S. privacy rights. But Turner moved to block the bill from coming to the floor with an amendment process.

The HPSCI chair took the unusual step of publicly announcing that he had made available to House members classified information regarding a “serious national security threat” and called on President Biden to declassify all information related to it. Although Turner didn’t specify the threat at the time, it turned out to be a Russian space-based military capability—a serious threat, but not as urgent as Turner had made it seem. Lawmakers had been in possession of the intelligence for weeks prior to Turner’s announcement.

The point was that the information about the Russian space weapon was reportedly collected via 702. Turner’s announcement was meant to show that the controversial surveillance program was an indispensable tool and anyone who moved to reform it was playing fast and loose with national security and exposing Americans to danger.

Under Turner’s leadership, in other words, HPSCI has been making the IC’s case. But defending the interests of a cadre that’s abused its power by spying on Americans, including the president-elect, is the opposite of what Donald Trump had in mind when he swore he’d clean out the deep state.

When contacted by Tablet, Steinman said: “President Trump has the greatest instincts in a leader I have ever seen. And he deserves a team that executes his vision with the tenacity and vigor befitting the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.”