Obamas CIA chief just offered a Trump-Russia quote for the ages [View all]

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Obama’s CIA chief just offered a Trump-Russia quote for the ages
“People who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.”
Updated by Yochi Dreazen May 23, 2017, 4:00pm EDT


It’s rare for a single quote to tell you something genuinely new and important about a story as big as the Trump-Russia scandal. There are exceptions — and former CIA Director John Brennan just gave us one for the ages.

Testifying in front of the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday, Brennan said that Russia “brazenly interfered” in the 2016 elections and had been in active contact with members of the Trump campaign. Brennan was careful to avoid explicitly saying that the two sides colluded, and said the Trump aides may not have even known the Russians were spies. Then he dropped the hammer.

"Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late,” he said.

It’s important to note that Brennan wasn’t literally accusing anyone in the Trump campaign — let alone the president himself — of committing treason, which has so high a bar that almost no one in the history of the US has been tried and convicted of it.

Still, enough evidence of potential wrongdoing has piled up that the Justice Department recently tapped former FBI Director Robert Mueller to lead an expanding probe into the president’s Russia connections. The investigation is already reaching straight into the West Wing: The Washington Post reported late last week that a member of Trump’s inner circle — widely believed to be Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and main adviser — is a “significant person of interest” for the FBI.

Brennan stopped short of saying that the communications he saw between Russia and the Trump campaign amounted to actual collusion. His overall point was something damning in a different way: Trump aides were in regular contact with Russia and never stopped to ask themselves whom they were actually working with or why Russians would be taking so strong and direct an interest in an American presidential election.

“I know what the Russians try to do. They try to suborn individuals and try to get individuals, including US individuals, to act on their behalf, wittingly or unwittingly,” he told the panel. “I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons involved in the campaign or not to work on their behalf.”

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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/23/15681508/trump-russia-election-meddling-fbi-mueller-john-brennan