Former acting CIA director Michael Morell regrets how unfairly U.S. intelligence agencies treated President Trump during the presidential transition and campaign.
Morell, who endorsed Hillary Clinton in a 2016 New York Times op-ed, said the CIA, NSA, FBI and other intelligence agencies should have remained neutral instead of attacking and undermining Trump.
“I don’t think I fully thought through the implications,” Morell told Politico. “There were downsides to it that I didn’t think about at the time.”
Top intelligence officials openly attacking a sitting United States president undermines his authority as the leader of the free world and makes the intelligence agencies look like partisan hacks.
The intel agencies are supposed to be nonpartisan and apolitical, but they have been vocally anti-Trump both before and since he took office.
“So let’s put ourselves here in Donald Trump’s shoes,” Morell said. “What does he see? He sees a former director of CIA and a former director of NSA, Mike Hayden … criticizing him and his policies. Right? And he could rightfully have said, ‘What’s going on with these intelligence guys?’”
Morell continued: “Then he sees a former acting director and deputy director of CIA criticizing him and endorsing his opponent. And then he gets his first intelligence briefing after becoming the Republican nominee. And within 24 to 48 hours, there are leaks out of that that are critical of him and his then-national security advisor, Mike Flynn.”
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Morell said it’s no wonder President Trump has attacked the intelligence agencies (which employ countless Obama holdovers even at the upper levels), given the constant press leaks and withering public condemnations from current and former officials.
“So this stuff starts to build, right?” Morell said. “And he must have said to himself, ‘What is it with these intelligence guys? Are they political?’ The director at the time, John Brennan, during the campaign occasionally would push back on things that Donald Trump had said.”
Looking back, Michael Morell said the intelligence agencies should have remained neutral, like they’re supposed to.
Morell’s mea culpa comes amid stunning revelations that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team is stacked with anti-Trumpers who openly despise the president. The team is supposed to be nonpartisan and impartial, but it appears to be anything but.
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This week, bombshell reports revealed that the wife of a top Department of Justice official is married to a former employee of Fusion GPS, the group behind the discredited “Trump-Russia dossier” (video above).
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Samantha Chang is a senior staff writer for BizPac Review. She is a financial editor and lawyer based in New York City.
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