After the 2020 election, ex-Trump attorney and adviser Sidney Powell reportedly tried to enlist a Department of Defense official to help retrieve then-CIA Director Gina Haspel from what Powell believed to be a secret, election-related mission in Germany, ABC News reports, according to journalist Jonathan Karl's new book, Betrayal: Inside the Final Act of the Trump Show. The mission, which was not real, became one of the "most far-fetched claims about the election."
According to Karl, Powell called the senior intelligence official, Ezra Cohen, in the election's aftermath, pushing a "false conspiracy theory that had been gaining steam among QAnon followers."
"Gina Haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in Germany," Powell told Cohen, per Karl. "You need to launch a special operations mission to get her."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The Trump attorney believed Haspel had been injured while completing a secret CIA operation aiming to seize and destroy evidence of vote tampering on an election-related computer server, Karl reports. She thought the CIA was complicit. None of it was true.
But Powell believed it, and wanted the Defense Department to immediately "send a special operations team over to Germany," locate the server, and "force Haspel to confess," Karl writes.
Cohen, for his part, "thought Powell sounded out of her mind," and soon reported the call up the chain, according to Karl.
A CIA spokesperson later further debunked any conspiracies, having told news outlets, "I'm happy to tell you that Director Haspel is alive and well and at the office."
-
October 4 editorial cartoonsCartoons Saturday's political cartoons include the Einstein files, defunding the police, and an odd tribute to Jane Goodall
-
Mustardy beans and hazelnuts recipeThe Week Recommends Nod to French classic offers zingy, fresh taste
-
Under siege: Argentina’s president drops his chainsawTalking Point The self-proclaimed ‘first anarcho-capitalist president in world history’ faces mounting troubles
-
Museum head ousted after Trump sword gift denialSpeed Read Todd Arrington, who led the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, denied the Trump administration a sword from the collection as a gift for King Charles
-
Trump declares ‘armed conflict’ with drug cartelsspeed read This provides a legal justification for recent lethal military strikes on three alleged drug trafficking boats
-
Supreme Court rules for Fed’s Cook in Trump feudSpeed Read Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can remain in her role following Trump’s attempts to oust her
-
‘This isn’t just semantics’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Miami Freedom Tower’s MAGA library squeezeTHE EXPLAINER Plans to place Donald Trump’s presidential library next to an iconic symbol of Florida’s Cuban immigrant community has South Florida divided
-
Judge rules Trump illegally targeted Gaza protestersSpeed Read The Trump administration’s push to arrest and deport international students for supporting Palestine is deemed illegal
-
Trump: US cities should be military ‘training grounds’Speed Read In a hastily assembled summit, Trump said he wants the military to fight the ‘enemy within’ the US
-
US government shuts down amid health care standoffSpeed Read Democrats said they won’t vote for a deal that doesn’t renew Affordable Care Act health care subsidies
