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."
-
Trump’s Comey case dealt new setbackspeed read A federal judge ruled that key evidence could not be used in an effort to reindict former FBI Director James Comey
-
Moscow cheers Trump’s new ‘America First’ strategyspeed read The president’s national security strategy seeks ‘strategic stability’ with Russia
-
Political cartoons for December 8Cartoons Monday's political cartoons include ICE in the Big Easy, Warner on the wane, and a Putin peace deal
-
Trump’s Comey case dealt new setback
speed read A federal judge ruled that key evidence could not be used in an effort to reindict former FBI Director James Comey
-
Moscow cheers Trump’s new ‘America First’ strategy
speed read The president’s national security strategy seeks ‘strategic stability’ with Russia
-
Trump’s poll collapse: can he stop the slide?Talking Point President who promised to ease cost-of-living has found that US economic woes can’t be solved ‘via executive fiat’
-
‘These accounts clearly are designed as a capitalist alternative’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Trump tightens restrictions for work visasSpeed Read The length of work permits for asylum seekers and refugees has been shortened from five years to 18 months
-
Supreme Court revives Texas GOP gerrymanderSpeed Read Texas Republicans can use the congressional map they approved in August at President Donald Trump’s behest
-
Boat strike footage rattles some lawmakersSpeed Read ‘Disturbing’ footage of the Sept. 2 attack on an alleged drug-trafficking boat also shows the second strike that killed two survivors who were clinging to the wreckage
-
Is a Putin-Modi love-in a worry for the West?Today’s Big Question The Indian leader is walking a ‘tightrope’ between Russia and the United States
