* NBC News on February 20th…

President Donald Trump pushed aside his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, because he was angry about a briefing to lawmakers that said Russia is interfering in the 2020 election to aid his re-election, current and former intelligence officials briefed on the matter told NBC News.

At issue was an election briefing to House members last week by Shelby Pierson, the DNI’s election security czar. The news was first reported by The New York Times.

The fast-moving developments have caused serious concern among intelligence officials.

* The very next day, Gov. Pritzker sent President Trump a letter and cc’d the state’s Republican delegation. The governor cited reports like the NBC story above and pointed out the “widely confirmed” reports that Russia targeted Illinois’ election infrastructure during the 2016 election.

Pritzker then requested that DNI outline “all known threats to election systems so that Illinois can be as prepared as possible to ensure our election is protected from all hazards including foreign interference.” He did not, as far as I know, release the letter to the news media until I requested it this afternoon.

* The governor was asked about his letter today at an unrelated press conference…

Reporter: Republican congressmen say you’ve sent a letter to the president… They say that you got some facts wrong there, but they’re also saying that you need to focus on Illinois and [automatic voter registration] problems that are happening. Can you address that?

Pritzker: Well, they would like me not to focus on the fact that the President fired his DNI for telling the truth to Congress. These are republican congressmen that are speaking. What I’ve written a letter to the President about is to make sure that I get fully briefed on any kind of potential Russian hacking, or interference with our elections. I’ve been focused on this since before I took office. And Day One and in office I gathered people in my administration who are in charge of securing our elections to make sure we’re doing everything we can. But we need to get proper information from the intelligence community from the federal government. And it appears when the President is firing his DNI for telling the truth about Russian interference, that we’re not getting all of the information we need. So I insisted that we get that.