Himes: Bill Pulte as DNI Is Trump’s ‘Worst and Most Dangerous’ Appointment

HIMES: Yeah, no, I saw the letter from Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley, and look, I think at one level they’re acknowledging reality, which is that the Pulte appointment has taken 702 reauthorization off the table. You know, we voted in the House and passed a bill with 42 Democrats. I will tell you that at least half of those Democrats are gone, because they will say, ‘look, I- I wasn’t very comfortable with this authority to begin with,’ and we don’t need to get into why it’s controversial, but it is controversial, but with Bill Pulte, who is, you know, absolutely dedicated to abusing authorities, no, I’m not there. And so you saw in the Senate yesterday a failure to proceed on a reauthorization. So the only right answer here, Margaret, the only right answer, and I don’t have a lot of confidence that it’s going to happen, is that the President says, you know, ‘oops, that was a mistake,’ and pulls the Bill Pulte appointment in favor of somebody who will give not just Democrats, but everybody more confidence that this is somebody with some experience who won’t abuse intelligence authorities. That’s the only way out of this mess, and you know President Trump could do that right now.

BRENNAN: Well, it sounds like you’re saying Democrats are going to withhold their votes until Pulte’s selection is polled. The President often doesn’t back down, as you know. Is- is the White House, is Marco Rubio, who was up on Capitol Hill just a few days ago, working in any way with Democrats to find an acceptable alternative here to Bill Pulte?

HIMES: Well, remember two things. Number one, where I work in the House of Representatives, we already passed the FISA reauthorization bill. So the question you ask is really a question for the Senate. I guess the Senate could just–

BRENNAN: Right, but this is the thing standing in the way you’re saying, right?

HIMES: It’s well- the Senate needs to pass a bill or pass the House bill, right. My point is that the House already passed a bill. Now, by the way, if we had to pass another bill in the context of Bill Pulte, I don’t think we could, but you know it’s not Marco Rubio. You said, is Marco Rubio working with Democrats to find an alternative to Bill Pulte–

BRENNAN: I know.

HIMES: –that’s- that’s not the way this works, right? The President needs to sober up and realize that this appointment is arguably in the- in the, you know, you know, basket of awful appointments he has made, this is probably the worst and most dangerous. So, I mean, I hope he can find a way out, because you’re right, he doesn’t like to back down, but he’s also not going to like the terrorist attacks that might happen if there is no 702 collection authority, because look, you know, Tom Cotton can try to say that this is a Democratic issue all he wants, but the Bill Pulte appointment was, you know, panned in a- in a strong bipartisan way.