Just wow. CNN contributor James Clapper actually went there and accused President Trump of being a Russian asset while on The Lead with Jake Tapper. He accused him of treason. Talk about anti-Trump hysteria. This is a guy who was the National Intelligence director under Obama. You remember Obama… the guy that was so ‘flexible’ with Vladimir Putin. Now, Clapper says Trump is being “handled” by Putin. Prove it or shut it. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton nailed Clapper for it on Judge Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox. “He just accused the president of treason essentially. He’s saying that he is an unwitting Russian agent. If he’s got evidence for that I would like to hear it!” Me too.
Bolton said in no uncertain terms that this unsubstantiated narrative being pushed by liberal media has gotten way out of control and is hurting the United States. And it’s time for the Russia conspiracy theorists to put up or shut up. We’ve been doing this dance for a year and there is no proof that Trump is involved with the Russians at all. And there won’t be. But the left just won’t stop… they think if they say it long enough, it will become fact and they can impeach Trump.
“This paranoia really is causing enormous negative consequences for our democratic institutions,” Bolton said. “Unless there is evidence of ‘collusion’ — of which we have seen none so far — we really need to narrow the dimension of Mueller’s probe. [The special counsel] is out of control, they are not supervised. It’s dangerous.” I have a great deal of respect for John Bolton. He doesn’t say things like this lightly.
This response from Bolton came after Clapper exchanged thoughts with fill-in host Sciutto:
JAMES CLAPPER: “I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that’s what he’s doing with the President.”
JIM SCIUTTO: “You’re saying that Russia is handling President Trump as an asset?”
CLAPPER: “That seems to be — that’s the appearance to me. So, you know, we’ve shared intelligence with the Russians for a long time. We’ve always done that. Although my experience with them has been pretty much of a one-way street, where we provide them intelligence and we don’t get much back. And oddly enough, my first exposure to that was in the early ‘90s when I served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and we were trying to engage the Russians on, of all places, North Korea and didn’t get much back from them. I think what we did is the right thing. Certainly when people’s lives are at risk that we do have a duty to warn. So the intelligence community, CIA did the right thing here.
And I thought in a rather theatric gesture of a phone call to thank President Trump for something that goes on below the radar and is not all that visible.”
SCIUTTO: “I just want to be clear though here, you’re saying Russia is treating the President of the United States as an asset?”
CLAPPER: “I’m saying this figuratively.”
Clapper was referring to reports that the Trump administration shared intelligence that thwarted a terrorist bombing and that Putin called the President to thank him. Silly me, I thought that is what we were supposed to do. I consider the Russians enemies, but if we have intel that will stop terrorists, why wouldn’t we share it? That’s what Trump did.
For someone like Clapper to say such a thing is incredibly reckless and slanderous. This is the same guy that was accused of lying to Congress in 2013. At issue was the scope of the Obama administration’s surveillance of Americans. This is outright defamation of character and President Trump should not let this stand.
Not everyone at the CIA is like Clapper though. Former acting CIA director Michael Morell said US intelligence agencies should not have treated President Trump so unfairly. I agree, but it goes even further than that. They conspired against a sitting President.
Morell endorsed Hillary Clinton for the presidency and he has repeatedly criticized Trump. But he pointed out that the CIA, NSA, FBI and other intel agencies should have remained neutral instead of undermining him. “I don’t think I fully thought through the implications,” Morell said. “There were downsides to it that I didn’t think about at the time.” Again, he’s right. But the damage has already been done. He did point out that undermining the authority of a sitting President as the leader of the free world, makes the intel agencies look like partisan hacks. Which they are, I’m sorry to say.
H/T: BizPac Review, PolitiStick
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