A former senior Dept. of Justice official is one of several current and former intelligence agents who were “floored by President Donald Trump’s fervent defense of Russia at this year’s G7 summit in Biarritz, France,” according to a report at Business Insider.
That senior DOJ official worked closely with Robert Mueller when he led the FBI, and “told Insider Trump’s behavior was ‘directly out of the Putin playbook. We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office.'”
“There is no fathomable explanation for why the president said these things,” the former official said. “Letting Russia off the hook for bullying smaller countries and then blaming Obama for it? It’s directly out of the Putin playbook.”
Glenn Carle, a former CIA covert operative who agreed to go on the record, “told Insider there’s been ‘no question’ in his mind for years that the president is behaving like ‘a spy for the Russians.'”
“The evidence is so overwhelming that in my 35 years in intelligence, I have never seen anything so certain,” Carle said.
“Intelligence assets become convinced to be spies for multiple reasons,” Carle, who specialized in getting foreign spies to become turncoats when he was at the CIA, said in an earlier interview with Insider. “It might start with kompromat or financial hooks, and the asset may be convinced he is acting as a patriot until he becomes accustomed to his role.”
Another official described as a “former CIA operative” “told Insider the evidence is ‘overwhelming’ that Trump is a Russian agent, but another CIA and NSA veteran said it was more likely Trump was currying favor with Putin for future business deals.”
And “a recently retired FBI special agent told Insider that Trump’s freewheeling and often unfounded statements make it more likely that he’s a ‘useful idiot’ for the Russians. But ‘it would not surprise me in the least if the Russians had at least one asset in Trump’s inner circle.'”
Meanwhile, a counter-intelligence agent who works for the FBI spoke about the G7, saying: “It’s hard to see the bar anymore since it’s been pushed so far down the last few years, but President Trump’s behavior over the weekend was a new low.”
Read the entire report at Business Insider.