Former CIA official Phil Mudd railed against the Trump administration during a CNN segment on Tuesday, as he said the White House was creating an unprecedented level of mistrust among its own intelligence agencies.
During a CNN panel discussion led by CNN's Chris Cuomo, Mudd slammed the White House for continuing to claim that former President Barack Obama had ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential election, despite the fact that the directors of both the FBI and the NSA said on Monday they had no evidence at all to back up that claim.
"This case is closed and Sean Spicer has his head in the sand," he said.
Mudd went on to say that Trump's refusal to listen to his own intelligence agencies had the potential to create a massive security crisis, as the president might not be listening to intelligence briefings about potential terrorist threats to the United States.
"The question I have going forward that nobody is asking, Chris, and periodically the President of the United States sits down every couple of weeks with the FBI, and asks what threats do you see?" he said. "How many times are they having conversations that the president should be aware of about what is happening with regard to terrorism and the United States, and my guess is those conversations are not happening."
Mudd concluded by saying that Trump has created such a massive trust gap between himself and his own intelligence agencies that many of them would be reluctant to back him up if he hastily tried to blame ISIS for a terror attack on American soil.
"Going forward in the next 6, 12, 18 months, the president will face a tragedy," he said. "If he comes out tweeting within an hour or two saying, 'I know ISIS did this,' and we're bombing in Syria -- people like me, inside and outside intel, are going to say, 'I would have trusted Bush, I would have trusted Obama, and I don't trust this guy, I need evidence.' I think he is destroying his credibility."
Watch the segment below.
