Donald Trump serves the interests of Russia and has a “fawning” relationship with Vladimir Putin, a former FBI official has said.
Andrew McCabe, who was FBI deputy director until Trump fired him in 2018, made the comments on the One Decision podcast, where he said there are “significant questions” about the former president’s interactions with Russia and its leader.
When asked whether Trump was an asset for Moscow, McCabe replied: “I do, I do.” While McCabe did not class Trump as a recruited knowing asset in the traditional sense, he did believe the former president “has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States.”
Newsweek has contacted the Trump team for comment.
This image from June 28, 2019 at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan shows former President Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images
McCabe said Trump’s approach to interacting with the Russian president “be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions,” as well as his views on NATO and the war in Ukraine started by Putin.
McCabe was part of the FBI leadership during investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow, which were subject to scrutiny when the former president was in the White House.
He was fired in March 2018 just before he was due to retire and was the subject of a criminal investigation for allegedly lying about a media leak. The investigation was dropped in 2020 and the next year McCabe settled a lawsuit against the justice department.
During Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia, Trump caused controversy for his claims that Putin would not have invaded had he been in the White House, and for refraining from saying that a Ukrainian victory was in U.S. interests, rather it was best for Washington “to get this war finished” and “negotiate a deal.”
McCabe said on the podcast co-hosted by ex-head of British intelligence agency MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, that there are “very serious questions” about why Trump “has this fawning sort of admiration for Vladimir Putin in a way that no other American president, Republican or Democrat, ever has.”
Kremlin propagandists on Russian state television have openly discussed their preference for Trump to win in November, partly due to his opposition to further American military assistance for Kyiv.
“It may just be from a fundamental misunderstanding of this problem set that’s always a problem,” McCabe said, suggesting that another possibility was “there is some kind of relationship or a desire for a relationship of some sort, be it economic or business oriented,” while adding none of those possibilities “have been proven.”
