The head of the House Intelligence Committee implied yesterday that President Obama might have known about his CIA director’s extramarital fling before the election.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) said Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that the Justice Department hadn’t informed the president before the election didn’t preclude the notion that Holder might have told Obama privately about David Petraeus’ affair with his biographer — a question, Rogers said, Holder should address before Congress.
“It probably should have been brought forward earlier as a national-security threat,” Rogers said. “I’m not sure that the president was not told before Election Day. The attorney general said that the Department of Justice did not notify the president, but we don’t know if the attorney general . . . [notified him].”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) speculated the retired general’s leaving the military for the CIA gave him freedoms that led to his downfall. “There’s no entourage. There’s no driver,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Petraeus, meanwhile, has hired top DC lawyer Robert Barnett to help him navigate the fallout.
Barnett is known for negotiating book deals for political heavy hitters, but the disgraced CIA honcho is not planning a book, a source said.