'Significant questions': Former FBI deputy director accuses Trump of being a Russian asset

12 September 2024

A top FBI official who worked in former President Donald Trump's administration is now accusing the 45th president of the United States of being an easy mark for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In an episode of former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove's "One Decision" podcast earlier this week ahead of the Tuesday debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe — who Trump fired in 2018 — remarked on the ex-president's unusually accommodating view of Putin's regime. The Guardian reported that when Dearlove asked McCabe if he thought Trump could be a Russian asset, McCabe responded: "I do, I do."

"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."

During the debate, ABC moderator David Muir asked the former president several times if he felt it was important that Ukraine win the war against Russia, and Trump refused to publicly side with Volodymyr Zelensky over Putin. Trump would only say that the war needed to end in order to "save lives."

“I think it’s in the US’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done,” Trump said. “Negotiate a deal.”

This prompted Harris to tell viewers that her opponent would push Zelensky to cede Ukrainian territory if he won the November election. She noted that she and President Joe Biden worked to "preserve the ability of Zelensky and the Ukrainians to fight for their independence." She added that if Trump had his way, "Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland."

"Why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch," Harris said.

Putin had already illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 — which was condemned by the international community and got Russia thrown out of the G8 (now the G7). His 2022 incursion into Ukraine's Donbass region in the east in 2022 prompted the ongoing war, which Biden has said Ukraine must win in order to protect the NATO alliance.

Additionally, Trump has publicly embraced far-right authoritarian world leaders in the vein of Putin, like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He boasted about Orbán's praise of his administration during Tuesday night's debate, and downplayed the Hungarian leader's "strongman" label.

Click here to read the Guardian's full report.

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