As A Candidate, Trump Asked FBI In Intelligence Briefing: 'Are The Russians Bad?'
When the FBI gave candidate Donald Trump his first intelligence briefing in 2016 and warned that foreign agents might try to infiltrate his campaign, Trump asked, “Are the Russians bad?” according to an official summary of the meeting obtained by Politico.
The summary was filed as part of Operation Hurricane, the code name for the FBI investigation launched in August 2016 into suspected Kremlin interference in that year’s election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.
Trump-appointed Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified and released the summary of the briefing this week at the behest of Senate Republicans looking to present the FBI as targeting Trump even before his election.
But Trump’s own comments about Russia, related in the FBI summary, place him in a less-than-favorable light — revealing him to be either incredibly gullible and unsophisticated in his understanding, or deliberately disingenuous about Russia.
Michael Flynn, who would later go on to be Trump’s national security adviser, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Trump’s transition team leader, were also at the 13-minute briefing, in which FBI agent Joe Pientka presented them with the basics of the threat to U.S. security.
According to Pientka’s summary, Trump asked him if the Russians were more dangerous than the Chinese because they have more operatives in the U.S.
The agent said both countries are bad and told the men that the number of operatives was “not an indicator of the severity of the threat,” according to the document.
The FBI agent then shared that when he told Trump and his team that the U.S. is a “world leader in counterintelligence,” Trump asked: “Russia, too?”
According to the summary, Trump also asked which country, Russia or China, was worse when it came to violations of nuclear testing bans and was told: “They are both bad, but Russia is worse.”
“Trump and Christie turned toward each other, and...
