Democrats preparing investigations into Trump's handling of US spy agencies

Democrats in the US House of Representatives, who will control key committees next year, are preparing investigations into what they say was US President Donald Trump's politicization and gutting of US spy agencies, including whether analysts have censored themselves to avoid retaliation.“There's absolutely evidence that analysts are hesitant to write on topics that they think might be controversial. There's absolutely evidence of a decline in morale in the analytic community because of the pressures that they are under,” US Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat who will become chairman of the House intelligence committee in January, told Reuters on Tuesday.There has been little scrutiny of the state of the US intelligence community by the Republican-run Congress during the first two years of Trump's second term, during which the administration fired or forced out hundreds of officers and disrupted the production of analyzes on key issues, including Iran.Himes said that would change after he takes over the committee in January, when Democrats assume control of the House of Representatives and the Senate following their sweep of the November 3 midterm elections.He did not disclose how the investigations would proceed, but said that one focus would be what he called retaliatory firings.“We're going to tell the story of the patriots who were fired because they said something that was inconsistent with what…