Eli Lake, Columnist

If Russia Is Blackmailing Trump, Tell Investigators, Not MSNBC

The former CIA chief's insinuations on cable news play right into the president's hands.

March 22, 2018 at 6:14 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

He knows how to testify. And he knows it doesn't happen on a TV set.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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For a few hours on Wednesday, America's worst fears about Donald Trump seemed to be confirmed: Someone who ought to know implied that the president was being blackmailed by Russia. Former CIA director John Brennan, who was in his post right up until Trump's inauguration, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" panel that he thinks Trump is afraid of Russian president Vladimir Putin. "The fact that he has had this fawning attitude towards Mr. Putin and has not said anything negative about him, it continues to say something to me that he has something to fear and something serious to fear," Brennan said.

Yes, this has been whispered by Democrats and implied by some in the media since the final weeks of the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton famously called Trump a Russian puppet. The opposition research dossier paid for by her campaign compiled these allegations from assorted Russian sources of the former British spy Christopher Steele. That Trump is owned by Putin has been a running punch line on late-night comedy shows.