Attention to the Unseen

NBC News reports: As President Donald Trump and his allies continue to denounce the CIA whistleblower whose complaint led to an impeachment investigation, pressure is building on the spy agency’s director, Gina Haspel, to take a stand on the matter, current and former intelligence officials tell NBC News. “It will be incumbent on her to protect the whistleblower — and by extension, the organization — moving forward,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a recently retired CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and…

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ProPublica reports: Last November, a top Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a candid email to colleagues about pressure from the White House to reroute Middle East aid to religious minorities, particularly Christian groups. “Sometimes this decision will be made for us by the White House (see… Iraq! And, increasingly, Syria),” said Hallam Ferguson, a senior official in USAID’s Middle East bureau, in an email seen by ProPublica. “We need to stay ahead of this curve…

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Rep. Adam Schiff writes: A little over one month has passed since the White House released the record of President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Americans read for themselves how President Zelensky sought more weapons critical to Ukraine’s defense, and how President Trump responded: “I would like you to do us a favor though” and laid bare his abuse of the power of the presidency. From the call record alone, we have stark evidence…

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Politico reports: Gordon Sondland, a key witness in the impeachment inquiry, revealed that he told a top Ukrainian official that hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid would “likely” be held up unless the country’s government announced investigations into President Donald Trump’s political rivals — a major reversal from his previous closed-door testimony. The acknowledgment of a quid pro quo is an explosive shift that threatens to upend claims by the president’s allies that military aid was not used…

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The Washington Post reports: The riot police, dressed in green fatigues, advanced down a central city street. Some of the officers wore black masks, while others held shields or shotguns loaded with rubber bullets and tear-gas grenades. As a few dozen protesters jeered, police fired back with their own insults. “Remember, you are not a person, you are not even worthy as an animal!” an officer shouted. “You are not a person, you’re a cockroach!” Soon, police unleashed tear gas…

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The Guardian reports: Boris Johnson was on Monday night accused of presiding over a cover-up after it emerged that No 10 refused to clear the publication of a potentially incendiary report examining Russian infiltration in British politics, including the Conservative party. Downing Street indicated on Monday that it would not allow a 50-page dossier from the intelligence and security committee to be published before the election, prompting a string of complaints over its suppression. The committee’s chairman, Dominic Grieve, called…

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The New York Times reports: As President Trump’s first C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo was briefed by agency officials on the extensive evidence — including American intercepts of conversations between participants — showing that Russian hackers working for the government of Vladimir V. Putin had interfered in the 2016 American presidential campaign. In May 2017, Mr. Pompeo testified in a Senate hearing that he stood by that conclusion. Two and a half years later, Mr. Pompeo seems to have changed his…

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