Former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell on Sunday praised current head John Ratcliffe for scaling back in-person briefings with Congress on election security — saying “he’s reading exactly” that the problem is leaks.
In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Grenell called Ratcliffe “a breath of fresh air.”
”He’s reading exactly the problem and trying to find a solution,” he said.
According to Grenell, career intelligence officials would come to him when he served as acting DNI and said they didn’t want to brief lawmakers on Capitol Hill because they would “politicize” the work.
“We have some bad apples who are… leaking partial information to cheerleading reporters,” Grenell said, adding Ratcliffe is trying to solve the leaks.”
Grenell also insisted China is the gravest threat to the United States — not Russia.
“Russia is about propaganda and that’s what they’ve been pushing from the beginning,” he said. “The Chinese are a completely different level… the current situation that we are dealing with that is incredibly serious is the Chinese threat, it’s a much higher threat.”
“He’s trying to solve that problem. I applaud his work,” Grenell said of Ratcliffe.
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