{"id":685,"date":"2018-03-21T11:14:46","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T15:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=685"},"modified":"2018-03-21T11:14:46","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T15:14:46","slug":"john-brennan-a-former-c-i-a-director-suggests-russia-may-have-something-on-president-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=685","title":{"rendered":"John Brennan, a Former C.I.A. Director, Suggests Russia \u2018May Have Something\u2019 on President Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0EILEEN SULLIVAN\u00a0<\/span>

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President Trump at the National Republican Congressional Committee March Dinner in Washington, on Tuesday.<\/span>\u00a0Credit<\/span>Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump indirectly criticized Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, on Wednesday for the ongoing investigation into Russia\u2019s 2016 campaign meddling, even as a former C.I.A. director said during a morning news show that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may have compromising information on Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

After a weekend of\u00a0attacking Mr. Mueller<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 against the advice of his own lawyers \u2014 Mr. Trump picked up again in early morning tweets when he quoted a Harvard professor who said Mr. Mueller should never have been appointed to be the special counsel to investigate Russia\u2019s meddling in the 2016 election. That\u00a0investigation has expanded<\/a>\u00a0into inquiries into Mr. Trump\u2019s aides and his own business dealings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was opposed to the selection of Mueller to be Special Council,\u201d Mr. Trump tweeted, misspelling the word, \u201ccounsel,\u201d as he quoted\u00a0Alan M. Dershowitz<\/a>, a Harvard Law professor who has been outspoken in his defense of the president.<\/p>\n

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Separately,\u00a0on MSNBC\u2019s \u201cMorning Joe<\/a>,\u201d John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, speculated that the Russians \u201cmay have something on him personally,\u201d referring to Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

Mr. Brennan was the C.I.A. director when a\u00a0salacious dossier<\/a>\u00a0surfaced in 2016 that claimed the Russians had compromising information on Mr. Trump. There has been no proof that such material exists, but Mr. Trump\u2019s affection for the Russian leader has raised questions about the nature of their relationship.<\/p>\n

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On Tuesday,\u00a0Mr. Trump congratulated<\/a>\u00a0Mr. Putin on his re-election<\/a>\u00a0and made no mention of the election meddling. Mr. Trump has routinely issued statements about Russia and Mr. Putin that sound at odds with his own advisers and administration actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s afraid of the president of Russia,\u201d said Mr. Brennan, now retired from government service and a critic of Mr. Trump.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On Saturday, Mr. Brennan attacked Mr. Trump on Twitter after\u00a0the president tweeted<\/a>\u00a0about his excitement over the\u00a0firing of the deputy director of the F.B.I.<\/a>, Andrew G. McCabe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history,\u201d\u00a0Mr. Brennan wrote.<\/a><\/p>\n

For months, Mr. Trump personally attacked Mr. McCabe, a 21-year veteran of the F.B.I. and former deputy director. Mr. McCabe briefly served in the top role after Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the president\u2019s first F.B.I. director.\u00a0Mr. McCabe was fired<\/a>\u00a0on the eve of his retirement, which puts his government pension in jeopardy. After the firing, it was disclosed that Mr. McCabe kept memos on Mr. Trump, which Mr. Mueller\u2019s investigators can access.<\/p>\n

Mr. Mueller has accused\u00a013 Russians and three companies<\/a>\u00a0of election meddling.\u00a0Three of Mr. Trump\u2019s former associates<\/a>\u00a0have pleaded guilty as part of the ongoing inquiry. Last week, the\u00a0special counsel issued subpoenas<\/a>for the Trump organization, seeking documents including some related to Russia.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump has consistently called the investigation into Russia\u2019s meddling a \u201choax.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think President Trump was right when he said there never should have been a Special Council appointed,\u201d Mr. Trump quoted Mr. Dershowitz as saying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0EILEEN SULLIVAN\u00a0MARCH 21, 2018 President Trump at the National Republican Congressional Committee March Dinner in Washington, on Tuesday.\u00a0CreditDoug Mills\/The New York Times WASHINGTON \u2014 President…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","category-presidential-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gopplaybook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-21_11-11-41.jpg?fit=764%2C504&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8VBh7-b3","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":688,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions\/688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}