Susan M. Gordon, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, provides recommendations and comments during the 2nd National Space Council meeting at the John F. Kennedy Space Center Space Shuttle Processing Facility, Florida, Feb. 21, 2018. The council met to discuss and hear testimony about the importance of the U.S. space enterprise. (DoD Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. James K. McCann) by CJCS Flickr photostream, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

On Sunday, President Trump took to Twitter to announce the departure of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. As I said at the time, this is a good thing. Coats has, in my view, shielded the intelligence community from experiencing the consequences of their illegal meddling in the 2016 election in a failed attempt to elect Hillary Clinton and their subsequent involvement is what can only be described as a soft coup attempt. Now that the special prosecutor looking into how this nonsense started is closing in on a lot of people, Coats will be required to assist in providing access to people and documents. He really couldn’t be relied upon to do so as he’s made it very clear that he does not believe he’s actually part of the administration.

His departure set up a quandary. By law, the designated successor is the deputy director. This makes the ODNI different from basically every other federal agency where the Federal Vacancies Reform Act applies. The problem was that the deputy, Sue Gordon, was an acolyte of John Brennan and a close friend of CIA director Gina Haspel. Brennan, in any other country, would have been imprisoned for treason by now. Haspel was chief of CIA’s London Station as some American agency made numerous runs at members of the Trump campaign team in that city to try to compromise them. Her personal relationships and her quarter-century at CIA all combined to not give a warm fuzzy feeling that she would cooperate with John Durham’s investigation. I advocated dismissing her, along with Coats, using the FVRA to select her successor and then allowing that person to succeed Coats.

When my post hit Twitter, I was inundated by idiots claiming this could not happen because, apparently, Sue Gordon is mentioned in the Constitution or something. Amazingly, a lot of Twitter morons believe that Executive Branch agencies do not respond to directives from the White House because they “serve the people.” In this bizarro world, the agencies do whatever the hell they want…so long as they are doing what the left wants. You don’t find the same argument used now that Education and HHS are eradicating much of the progressive agenda. And, trust me, these goofs don’t want a lot of armed men deciding they’ve had all the Antifa bullsh** they are going to stand for and rolling into Portland to stand that odoriferous crew up against an wall because they are “serving the people.”

Anyway, yesterday Gordon did the right thing. She resigned.

Sue Gordon left a letter for Trump with a handwritten note that made clear she was resigning because he wanted her to.

“I offer this letter as an act of respect & patriotism, not preference. You should have your team."

She signed it: “Godspeed.” https://t.co/gLTpQBa6uT pic.twitter.com/9kV2LzLgR6

— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) August 9, 2019

BREAKING: Here's the resignation letter @ODNIgov's Sue Gordon submitted to @POTUS

"As you ask a new leadership team to take the helm, I will resign my position… I am confident in what the Intelligence Community has accomplished & what it is poised to do going forward" pic.twitter.com/D5VhkL8UR5

— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) August 8, 2019

Does this mean I had some inside knowledge or special gift? No. It only means that I could read the law and that TDS hadn’t caused a chronic crainio-rectal infarction that prevented me from seeing what was obviously going to happen. And it continues:

Per a WH official and several top Rs tonight, Gordon's exit has congressional Rs and Ds on edge. Intel com worried the WH is gaining power with CIA director largely a behind-the-scenes leader and Pompeo/Bolton now driving national-security policy + AG probing intel activities.

— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 9, 2019

I have to say I was somewhat shocked to find anyone in the federal bureaucracy that still had a sense of honor, much less within the upper reaches of the intelligence community and law enforcement, but perhaps I’ve become too jaded at the antics of Comey and McCabe and Strzok and Mueller and Weissmann and Clapper and Morrell and Brennan to accurately appraise those agencies. She knew the President didn’t have a lot of confidence in her and rather than become another Sally Yates, she accepted that and allowed the President to create his own team without drama.

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