The president’s dismantling of intelligence agencies and the Justice Department make another terrorist attack on America more likely
So much of what the media has focused on in the 100 days of Trump 2.0 has been the illegal, with judges of all political backgrounds striking down executive order after executive order on a wide array of topics: birthright citizenship, removal of planeloads of immigrants to foreign prisons, retaliation against law firms, firing of civil servants. Even the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled, remarkably in a unanimous decision, that the Trump administration has violated due process in its use of the Alien Enemies Act to arrest and export hundreds of humans.
The rule of law is essential to protect all of us. But flying under the radar is the more quotidian issue of policy changes in the realm of national security, which may just be as pernicious in their effect on the United States — and on New York City in particular. As someone who has worked for over 30 years in the field of criminal and national security law — as a DOJ prosecutor, an FBI General Counsel, a defense lawyer and a professor — let me describe what it is about the second Trump term that keeps me up at night. To be clear, these reforms are entirely lawful. But just because they are the valid result of an election does not mean that they are wise. Indeed, they serve to make our world a lot less safe.
Lowering our guard
The intelligence community has the mission to make sure that terrorist attacks, foreign and domestic, don’t happen. And for New Yorkers, who live in a city that has been historically top of mind for foreign terrorists, that function is of utmost importance.
Much of the American intelligence apparatus has undergone radical change in the little more than 100 days since Trump’s return to power — and it hasn’t been for the better.
For starters, the leadership of the agencies that oversee our intelligence functions has been replaced with people who, for the most part, have an extraordinary dearth of experience in the field. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and Pam Bondi, attorney general, are exhibits A and B. The idea that anyone can perform these critical functions without relevant national security expertise is akin to assigning a pedestrian off the street to perform brain surgery.
But Gabbard was a member of Congress and Bondi was attorney general of Florida, you might say. Those positions are simply inadequate to the task. Let me illustrate why they are insufficient: When I became general counsel of the FBI, I had access for the first time to the Presidential Daily Brief, or “PBD,” which compiles key national security threats from the intel community. I soon realized that the critical skillset that was necessary for our country’s safety was the ability to separate the true threats from the enormous volume of noise collected every day. Everything needs to be taken seriously, but in a world of limited resources and time, performing educated risk assessments, day in and day out, is required. I marveled at how our senior leadership made those innumerable life and death judgments every day. The intelligence community leadership is no place to learn on the job. Even new FBI Director Kash Patel, who does have some national security experience, was only a line-level attorney for a short period of time, and was not called on to make these daily critical assessments for the intelligence community.
The consequences of shredding alliances
But there is more. Even if imminent and serious intelligence information is properly recognized and sifted, this administration has reduced the chances of collecting critical intelligence in the first place. Foreign terrorists act across nation-state borders, and so we and our allies have learned to work together. That sharing traditionally occurs among the so-called “Five Eyes” (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and us) as well as many other countries (some openly and some less so, on the condition that the cooperation remain secret).
It should not come as a surprise that if you threaten to take over Canada, or denounce Europe and NATO, you will not be increasing the trust that is necessary for such information sharing. If you talk about war plans on a commercially available app like Signal, the same is true. (The reason you talk about such things on secure government communication systems is precisely so you do not run the risk of those without a “need to know” learning of it; today it could be a reputable journalist, tomorrow an adversarial state or terrorist cell.)
When your attorney general announces that the attack plans discussed on Signal were not classified and the Signal sharing was not intentional, you send a message to your allies that you can’t be trusted to keep their secrets secure. When you risk the revelation of your allies’ classified methods and means for collecting critical intelligence, by exposing that information to Signal chats or the bathrooms and closets of a Florida beach resort, you should not be surprised when the necessary level of critical sharing that makes us safe is put at grave risk.
The mounting risk doesn’t end there. On Day One of the new administration, the attorney general announced a series of lawful but dangerous policy changes that make us a whole lot less secure. The DOJ kleptocracy initiative (which served to put teeth in the U.S. sanctions against Russia, among other things) was dismantled, the foreign election interference group discarded, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) enforcement law gutted to only focus on nation-state espionage. (FARA is an important statute that serves to thwart foreign nation states from surreptitiously influencing our elections, public opinion and our politicians.) Why would the administration do all this if not to send a message that it is now safe for foreign actors to interfere in our elections? The task forces that comprised the DOJ’s kleptocracy initiatives were completely disbanded, thereby scattering the U.S. effort to prevent Russians evading U.S. sanctions (such as those put in place to pressure Russia after its invasion of Ukraine) to the wind.
Indeed, the president himself eroded the message to our allies that we will take cyber espionage seriously when he ignored the congressional statute barring TikTok from operating in the United States unless it severed ties with its Chinese parent (a law that was upheld by the Supreme Court just before it was ignored by the president). That ban was justified, at least in part, by national security concerns identified by Congress. After the president’s announcement, Bondi sent a letter to providers assuring them they would not face DOJ consequences for hosting TikTok on their platforms. In case that was not a clear enough message, Bondi’s Day One elimination of the National Security Division unit in charge of corporate enforcement — a unit that prosecuted sanctions violations — served to put another nail in the coffin of sanctions prosecutions.
For those connecting the dots, there are seemingly dozens more. There is a lack of focus on domestic terrorism, as evidenced by the president indiscriminately handing out pardons to Jan. 6 insurrectionists, including those who had been convicted of physically assaulting law enforcement officers.
None of the above takes into account the incalculable, and for now, unknowable, chilling effect on those in the intelligence and law enforcement community and those seeking to join it, who now stand to risk their careers by taking on righteous investigations into any of the above matters.
In short, the statements and actions of the administration suggest an obliviousness to the terrorist threat at best, and condonation at worst. For those of us who lived through 9/11 and saw and felt the devastation and pain from that day, the current lack of vigilance is profoundly concerning. Ignoring a matter of life and death will not make it go away.