Breaking Norms And Precedent, Biden Attempts To Purge Career Intelligence Official

Pelosi, Schiff, and Biden have politicized a career intelligence community position by demanding the removal of a national security professional.

Hours after President Joe Biden delivered his inaugural address promising to bring unity and healing to the country, his administration began a politically charged attack on a highly respected, newly appointed career intelligence official over fears he would be insufficiently loyal to Democratic partisans. The attempted purge has thus far followed the playbook publicly laid out by top Democrats and their left-wing media enablers.

In a stunning violation of precedent, Biden’s National Security Agency (NSA) placed General Counsel Michael J. Ellis on administrative leave pending a Defense Inspector General investigation of his recent appointment, as well as an unspecified claim of mishandling of classified information. Ellis has maintained a top security clearance, without any blemish, for more than a decade. He is a trained classification official both as a military officer and civilian.

While Ellis has prominent defenders from his many years of service in the intelligence community, his detractors include high profile participants in the Russia collusion hoax, proponents of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s attempt to publish classified information in a book, and some of the individuals who orchestrated the Ukraine impeachment effort.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi publicly asserted, contrary to the evidence, that Ellis was “a relatively recent law school graduate with a limited resume.” In fact, he graduated from the top-ranked Yale Law School a decade ago, after graduating from Dartmouth College summa cum laude. He clerked for Judge Jeffrey Sutton on the 6th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Judge Amul Thapar on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. He’s served honorably as a U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer since 2007.

He worked for the House Intelligence Committee from 2013 to 2017. In that role, he worked closely with the NSA on legislation, oversight, and investigations. He was the lead staffer for the bipartisan committee report on the Edward Snowden disclosures. While Rep. Adam Schiff on Sunday denounced Ellis for thwarting Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s efforts to distribute and amplify information closely held by the National Security Council, he had previously praised Ellis’s work on the Snowden report.

Ellis helped draft the bipartisan Intelligence Authorization Acts, FISA reform bills, and cybersecurity information sharing laws. He is an expert on FISA and other intelligence collection authorities, and regularly briefed then-ranking member Schiff on those matters.

He served the Trump administration as deputy National Security Council legal advisor and then as senior director for Intelligence Programs on the National Security Council. Having worked closely with NSA at senior levels continuously since 2013, he has more relevant experience than any other general counsel in recent memory.

In a Washington Post article based largely on anonymous sources and absolutely riddled with factual errors, reporter Ellen Nakashima — who won a Pulitzer Prize for her role perpetuating the Russia collusion hoax — suggested that previous general counsels did not serve in political roles prior to their service. She quoted the most recent general counsel Glenn Gerstell saying the agency and its legal office have “a deep tradition of being nonpartisan and it would be important for anybody in the position of general counsel to discharge the job that way.”

Gerstell, who served from 2015 through last year, was a Barack Obama bundler who raised $50,000 for the Democrat in 2012, as well as chairman of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority. His predecessor Raj De was Obama’s own staff secretary, and credibly accused of being involved in improper politicization while a staffer on...



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