A newly declassified memo released Monday confirms that the US intelligence agency rejected a critical request that President Trump filed to justify calling wartime laws to immediately expel Venezuelans into Salvadoran prisons.
The memo, along with the intelligence findings first reported by the New York Times in March, states that spy agencies do not believe that the administration of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro controls criminal gangster Tren de Aragua. That resolve contradicts what Trump claimed when he called out the deportation law.
“While Venezuela's tolerant environment could lead to TDA operation, the Maduro administration probably has no policy of working with the TDA and has not directed the TDA movement and operation in the US,” the memo said.
The memo release further lowers the Trump administration's rationale for its use of alien enemy law, and raises doubts about its powerful criticism of subsequent reports. After the Times published the article, the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation and portrayed the report as harmful if misleading. The administration doubled a month after similar reports in the Washington Post, and cited disclosures in both articles as reasons to ease restrictions on leak investigations.
Known as the “Community Sense” memo, the document was released by the Director of the National Intelligence Office in response to the request of the Freedom of Information Act by the Freedom of the Press. The Foundation provided the Times with a copy.
Lauren Harper, chairman of Daniel Ellsberg on the Foundation's government secrets, said the memo is in conflict with the administration's portrayal of content as a disastrous threat to public safety.
The government “declassified the same information almost immediately upon FOIA's request,” she said.
Harper continued: “Confidentialization proves that the material should have been public from the start.
However, executives continued to defend Trump's policies.
“As President Trump and his administration work hard every day to make America safe by deporting these violent criminals, some of the media is intended to manipulate the intelligence report assessment to undermine the president's agenda to keep Americans safe,” he said in a statement.
Justice Department officials said in a simple statement Tuesday morning that the gangs terrified Americans. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Until Trump evoked it in mid-March, the 18th century law, alien enemy law, was used only three times in American history during the declared war. The government says it is engaged in immediate elimination of citizens of the United States and the warring nation, or otherwise engaged in invasions or predatory invasions of US territory.
Shortly afterwards, the administration sent the Venezuelan Planetar Lord to the infamous high security prison in El Salvador without justification. Since then, the court has blocked further forwarding under the declaration. Citing evidence that some of the men sent there are likely not members of the gang, the American Civil Liberties Union called on judges to order the Trump administration to reclaim Venezuelans for regular immigration hearings.
In that face, the alien enemy law appears to require connections with foreign governments. Trump declared that Tren de Aragua committed a crime to destabilize the United States.
However, the Times reported a few days later that the Intelligence Reports community distributed findings on February 26th that it reached its opposing conclusions. The ratings rated were that the Venezuelan government and gangs were enemies, but some corrupt Venezuelan officials were associated with some gang members. He also said that the gang lacks centralized command and control, and is too confused to carry out any direction.
The Times also reported that only the FBI was partially opposed and believed there was some link, but that was based on information that other agencies like the CIA and NSA had not thought of.
The Trump administration asked the National Intelligence Council, which consists of senior analysts and national security policy experts reporting to Ms Gabbard, to look again at the evidence available.
On April 7th, I made a note that was released on Monday. The Washington Post reported on a memo that had further angered the administration, still categorized later that month.
The currently published memo said the intelligence community was based on conclusions based on a set of factors. Venezuelan security forces arrested members of Tren de Aragua, “we were regularly involved in armed conflicts with the TDA, leading to the killing of some TDA members,” the memo said, indicating that the government is treating the gang as a threat.
There is evidence that some “mid- to low-level Venezuelan officials will likely benefit from TDA's illegal activities,” but the memo said that the decentralized makeup of gangs will become “logistically challenging” as the entire organization acts at the government's request.
The memo also shed further light on the partial dissent of the FBI.
FBI analysts agreed to the overall assessment of the other agencies, but said they thought “.Some Venezuelan government officials will advance as the Maduro government's goals to tempt the government's government's government's goals to promote the migration of TDA members from Venezuela to the US, using members as proxies for Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the US to seduce the government and undermine public safety.
The FBI is based on “people detained for involvement in criminal activity in the United States or for illegal entry.” However, “most” in the intellectual community “deems unreliable to the intelligence that indicates that administration leaders are directing or enabling TDA to migrate to the United States,” the memo said.
In examining available evidence, the National Intelligence Council assessed whether detainees had “reliable access to the reported information” and whether they provided support for the support that the Maduro government allegedly provided gangs on behalf of its instructions.
Although some of this section has been edited, the notes showed skepticism. The legal issues for detainees said “in order to distract their liability for their crimes, they can make efforts to mitigate punishment by motivating them to falsely file affiliation with the Venezuelan administration and providing exculpatory or “valuable” information to US prosecutors.”
In late March, Chilean officials told the International Criminal Court that they suspected that the killing of a Chilean Venezuelan man last year was carried out by a “cells or groups associated with politically motivated Tren de Lagua” and was born from a Venezuelan government order. The Maduro administration denied the accusation.
However, the memo also said that other parts of the intelligence reporting community have not observed or collected evidence of communication or funding flows that demonstrate that government officials will provide instructions to gang leaders, despite the likely “broad” such interactions for such relationships.
So far, judges have been away from re-estimating the truth behind Trump's factual claims in deploying alien enemy law.
The day after the first article, Todd Blanche, former defense attorney for Trump, now the assistant attorney general, announced that the Justice Department has launched a criminal leak investigation.
In a statement, he criticized the article, saying the information was not only classified but was “inaccurate.” However, the classified notes support the Times reporting.
In an interview with Megyn Kelly last week about the podcast, Gabbard said the Intelligence News Community's report on the conclusions is “under investigation.” The leaker “selectively and intentionally ruled out the most important things,” she added, pointing to the FBI's belief that the Maduro government supports gang activity in the United States.
However, both the era and posts discussed the FBI's objections.
Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondy wrote in a memo that the leak investigation would roll back protections for press freedom, citing the era and submissions as examples of leaks of classified information.
In the case of spying, the prosecutor must prove that someone intentionally made unauthorized disclosure of defense-related information that could cause harm to the United States or help foreign enemies. Declassifying government memos raises questions about the era and any cases that could be brought about through submissions.
