Gabbard fired Michael Collins, the acting chair of the council, and Maria Langan-Riekhof, who served as Collins’ deputy.
“The Director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the Intelligence Community,” a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office said in a statement to the Washington Post.
The move came as the National Intelligence Council had recently published a report suggesting that the communist Maduro regime in Venezuela plays no role in Tren de Aragua gang members illegally immigrating to the United States.
As the New York Times noted, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials partially dissented from the National Intelligence Council’s findings, indicating that they believe there are links between Tren de Aragua gang members illegally immigrating to the U.S. and the Maduro regime.
“The memo also shed additional light on the F.B.I.’s partial dissent,” the Times reported:
It said that while F.B.I. analysts agreed with the other agencies’ overall assessment, they also thought that ‘some Venezuelan government officials facilitate TDA members’ migration from Venezuela to the United States and use members as proxies in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the United States to advance what they see as the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing governments and undermining public safety in these countries.’ [Emphasis added]
The F.B.I. based its view on ‘people detained for involvement in criminal activity in the United States or for entering the country illegally.’ But ‘most’ of the intelligence community ‘judges that intelligence indicating that regime leaders are directing or enabling TDA migration to the United States is not credible,’ the memo said. [Emphasis added]
President Donald Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport Tren de Aragua gang members from the U.S., an order that is being challenged by left-wing non-governmental organizations who claim that such gang members, classified as terrorists, have due process rights.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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