Intel expert says ‘we really should talk about the smugness of guilt when it comes to Donald Trump’
Bestselling author Malcolm Nance on MSNBC (screengrab)

MSNBC intelligence and foreign policy analyst slammed President Donald Trump's attempt to bribe Russian President Vladimir Putin during a Monday appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews.


Matthews noted that the Trump Tower Moscow deal that Trump was working on during the 2016 presidential campaign was expected to make $300 million for the Trump family.

"I think he should have told us who he is working for and working with," Matthews said. "What do you think?"

"Absolutely," Nance replied. "We talk about consciousness of guilt with regard to the way Donald Trump talks about Putin and his policies, we should talk about the smugness of guilt when it comes to Donald Trump."

"He seems to have had this attitude towards the entire conversation knowing that he had already offered a bribe to Vladimir Putin in the form of a $50 million penthouse at the top of Trump Tower," he added.

Nance published the book The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election before the 2016 election. He has subsequently written the 2018 book The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West.

"He was actually briefed by the FBI, given a counterintelligence brief that stated that he may be involved in a situation where Russia is trying to gain leverage on him -- and he already knew this," Nance argued. "Donald Trump has been playing this nation from the beginning."

"And if this is where Robert Mueller is going, I think this one point is going to be relatively easy to clarify with the testimony of Michael Cohen, but I think this is going to be the least of the charges Donald Trump is going to end up with," he predicted.

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