Happy New Year from John Kiriakou

An update on the coming year and on the doings in Washington

Happy new year, everybody! I wish all of you peace, health, and prosperity in 2025.

I wanted to tell you some good news, as well as to update you on some of the rumors circulating around Washington as we approach the second Trump Administration.

First, if you happen to find yourself in Belfast, Northern Ireland on January 31, Dublin, Ireland on February 1, or Manchester, England on February 2, please join me for “An Evening with the CIA.” Tickets in Belfast are just about sold out, but there are still some good seats in Dublin and Manchester. Check out www.tigerslanestudios.com for the details.

Washington is far more calm right now than it was in either January 2016 or January 2020. Yes, there are fences up around the Capitol and the White House, as well as along Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues. But it doesn’t seem like anybody is expecting anything out of the ordinary either when Donald Trump is certified as president on January 6 or when he is inaugurated on January 20. It’s the inside-baseball politics going on right now that are far more interesting.

If you’re Donald Trump, the good news is that your party controls 53 Senate seats. Democrats and Republicans in the body agree that they don’t want to futz around with the federal budget, including over the debt limit. So while, we should all expect to see some fireworks on the House side on these issues, the Senate will be quiet on the budget and will pass legislation quickly. Meanwhile, expect Trump to get some big wins on judicial appointments. Joe Biden named a handful more federal judges in his four years in the White House than Trump did in his first term. But federal judges can’t be filibustered. A judicial nominee needs only 51 votes to be approved. Trump has 53 (plus the Vice President), so judicial appointments won’t be a problem for him.

The House, however, is going to be a shit show. As things stand right now, Republicans have a majority of one. ONE! That’s because Matt Gaetz resigned when he thought he was going to be the Attorney General, and an elderly Texas Republican representative who literally went missing in July has since been found in a memory-care home. She won’t be replaced for another two weeks. Republicans, though, will have to vote on a Speaker before then. And that’s the rub. The current Speaker, Mike Johnson, can’t afford to lose a single vote. But one Republican already has said that he would vote “no” on Johnson. So it looks like Republicans will have round after round after round of voting (again) to find another weak consensus Speaker. I’m hearing that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) may be in the running, even if he doesn’t really want the job. Massie is seen as pro-Trump, but is willing to challenge and confront Trump when needed. He’s seen as a leading intellectual among Republicans. And he’s a Ron Paul-style Libertarian. I’ve met him a few times. He’s a nice enough guy. But I’m not sure that he has the fire in the belly to use an iron fist against his own colleagues. We’ll see.

A few weeks ago several right-leaning media outlets reported that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox-Kennedy, would be the new deputy director of the CIA. Fox-Kennedy is a former deep-cover CIA officer and the former RFK campaign manager. My friends tell me that Trump is smitten with her and he personally floated the idea that she should go back to the CIA and raise some hell. But Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) objected. Cotton is that malcontented neocon who masquerades as a MAGA Republican. He’s also the guy whom Trump had originally considered as CIA Director in 2017 and who, reportedly, put the kibosh on pardons in 2020 for Julian Assange and Ed Snowden. Cotton said, without offering a reason, that Fox-Kennedy should not be at the CIA. So Trump will reportedly name her the Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism, a position that does not require Senate confirmation and which is FAR more powerful than Deputy Director of the CIA. Good for her.

I’ll report more as I hear it. Enjoy the remainder of the holiday weekend. John