Washington(CNN) Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell said late Monday he will not be briefing lawmakers on Tuesday about election security despite being expected on Capitol Hill by members of Congress to be on the panel of the country's most senior national security officials.
Grenell had been due to appear alongside the other senior officials in a pair of classified briefings to all members of the House and Senate. A list of top agency officials obtained by CNN from two congressional sources and a person familiar with the plans listed Grenell alongside National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, FBI Director Christopher Wray and others.
As of late Monday night, the list and guidance circulated to Congress had not changed. However, Grenell and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence denied that he would be briefing.
Grenell's office would not explain why his name was on the list sent around by multiple congressional offices, and did not respond to requests for comment until after CNN reported Grenell was expected to appear.
"ODNI did not communicate to Congress at any point that ADNI Grenell would participate in election security briefings scheduled for Mar. 10," agency spokesperson Maura Beard said in a statement Tuesday.
In a message Monday night, Grenell told CNN the expectation was "fake info" and said the intention was always to send "experts."
Lawmakers were ultimately notified of the change by Tuesday morning.
Instead of Grenell, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence representative at the briefings will be Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, an office spokesperson told CNN.
Also not expected to appear is Shelby Pierson, ODNI's election threats executive who is the intelligence community's primary expert on election security.
Tuesday's briefings come almost three weeks after Grenell was controversially named to the top intel job, in the wake of an election security briefing by Pierson that angered Trump because she testified that Russia supports the President's reelection bid.
In unprepared remarks, Pierson had told members of the House Intelligence Committee in a February 13 briefing that Russia is meddling in the 2020 campaign and intelligence indicated it had once again developed a preference for Trump (as well as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders).
However, a senior intelligence official denied that Pierson had told lawmakers that Russia was actively aiding Trump's reelection effort.
Grenell replaced Adm. Joseph Maguire and pushed out his deputy, Andrew Hallman, a longtime CIA officer. An official from the National Security Council who had previously worked to discredit Robert Mueller's probe into Russian activity, Kash Patel, was named an adviser to Grenell.
Shortly afterward, Pierson said in a statement that she was keeping her job at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence amid early fears Grenell would purge the office's upper ranks.
"Ambassador Grenell has not asked me to leave," Pierson said in a statement several days after Grenell got the job. "In fact, he has encouraged and affirmed his support for my position here in the organization."
The President's naming of Grenell, who at the time was the ambassador to Germany, was met with howls from Democrats and criticism from intelligence professionals because of his lack of national security expertise coupled with his fierce partisan loyalty to the President.
Grenell would have been expected to give the "overview brief" on Tuesday, a former senior intelligence official said, and the detailed questions from lawmakers would be answered by the other senior officials.
Briefings on election security by senior officials to the congressional intelligence committees are somewhat routine. Briefings by the directors of the various agencies and the DNI are not as common. The day after Grenell started his job, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the March 10 briefing.
"American voters should decide American elections — not Vladimir Putin," the California Democrat tweeted. "All Members of Congress should condemn the President's reported efforts to dismiss threats to the integrity of our democracy & to politicize our intel community."
Grenell has made no public statements since he started as acting intelligence director, a role the White House has said is just temporary. No one else has been pushed out and Grenell has appeared to want to tamp down concerns by, in part, sending a letter to the ODNI workforce saying he's "committed to leading the IC with a nonpartisan approach."
Grenell was spotted touring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with Trump late last week and over the weekend posted photos on Instagram of himself with the President on Air Force One as well as at the President's Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.
Late last month Trump nominated Rep. John Ratcliffe to be the permanent DNI, the second time his name was put forward. The first time, last summer, Ratcliffe withdrew when it was discovered that he had exaggerated his resume. Now, however, the White House and the top senator on the Intelligence Committee, Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, say they believe Ratcliffe has a path to being confirmed.
Making Grenell the acting director may have been part of the calculation to get Ratcliffe confirmed. Current and former administration officials say that national security adviser Robert O'Brien and others thought the outcry following Grenell's naming would make it easier to get a candidate approved by the Senate.
This story and its headline have been updated after the acting director of national intelligence told CNN, following publication of this story, that he would not be attending the briefing.