Trump's ex-FBI official: We have 'many reasons' to think ex-president is a Russian 'asset'

Donald Trump could rightly be seen as a Russian asset, according to a former FBI director the ex-president fired in his first term.

Andrew McCabe appeared on the One Decision podcast co-hosted by former British intelligence agency chief Sir Richard Dearlove, who asked whether he thought it possible that Trump was a Russian asset, and he said, "I do, I do," reported The Guardian.

“I don’t know that I would characterize it as [an] active, recruited, knowing asset in the way that people in the intelligence community think of that term," McCabe said. "But I do think that Donald Trump has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States, and I think his approach to interacting with Vladimir Putin, be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions.”

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McCabe raised suspicions about Trump's attitude toward Ukraine and NATO in the face of Russian aggression and said he's had concerns about his admiration for Vladimir Putin since the ex-president fired him in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire, during the FBI's investigation of Kremlin interference in the 2016 election.

“You have to have some very serious questions about, why is it that Donald Trump … has this fawning sort of admiration for Vladimir Putin in a way that no other American president, Republican or Democrat, ever has," McCabe said.

“It may just be from a fundamental misunderstanding of this problem set that’s always a problem," he added. "That’s always a possibility, and I guess the other end of that spectrum would be that there is some kind of relationship or a desire for a relationship of some sort, be it economic or business oriented, what have you. I think those are possibilities. None of them have been proven. But as an intelligence officer, those are the things that you think about.”

McCabe expressed “very serious concerns” about a second Trump presidency and said that Russia had long desired to interfere with U.S. democracy.

“Their desire to kind of wreak havoc or mischief in our political system is something that’s been going on for years, decades and decades and decades," McCabe said. “Their interest in just simply sowing chaos and division and polarization. If they can do that, it’s a win. If they can actually hurt a candidate they don’t like, or help one that they do like, that’s an even bigger win.”

The Justice Department investigated McCabe for allegedly lying about a media leak, but that case was dropped in 2020, and he settled a lawsuit the following year that restored his full pension.