‘Trump knows exactly what he’s doing in working for the Russians’ and he's not ‘unwitting agent’: Intel Democrat

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) said President Donald Trump is not an unwitting Russian agent and instead "knows exactly what he's doing."

Swalwell, a former prosecutor, sits on the House Judiciary Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, joined MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews on Tuesday.

"It's a stunning thing to hear the president of the United States defend himself, saying I'm not an agent of the Russians," Matthews noted.

"Yeah, and 'I am not a crook,' right? We've heard that before as well," Swalwell noted.

"Where I come from, when you act on behalf of the Russians, when you encourage them to hack after it's revealed they're hacking, when you take all the meetings they offer, when you meet with their leader in secret and then you take the notes from the one witness who has a record, and act to take away sanctions, pull us out of Syria -- you're working for the Russians," he explained.

"And I think he knows exactly what he's doing," Swalwell added.

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