The Central Intelligence Agency has released a report describing how difficult it was to work with President Trump when he took office early in 2017.
The report comes in an update to John Helgerson’s book, “getting to Know the President,” which is unclassified on a CIA website and designated for “educational” purposes.
“For the Intelligence Community, the Trump transition was far and away the most difficult in its historical experience with briefing new presidents,” Helgerson claimed. “Trump was like Nixon, suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process, but unlike Nixon in the way he reacted. Rather than shut the [intelligence community] out, Trump engaged with it, but attacked it publicly.”
But even CBS, which reported on the comments, admitted that Trump’s “tense relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies worsened amid politically charged investigations into his campaign’s contacts with Russia.”
That all led to a “badly strained” rapport, Helgerson admits.
But comments at The Gateway Pundit suggested it was a little more than that.
“Wow, dirty CIA publishes hit piece on Trump – intel community describes him as challenging and embittered after they launched their coup against his administration for 4 years,” it said.
The comments pointed out that apparently, “the CIA was shocked that Trump was upset and leery of the organization after they launched their investigation on his campaign and administration based on complete lies. They point out that Trump was particularly upset with the dossier that was completely made up and accused him of paying hookers in Moscow to pee on a bed in his hotel room. We now know the entire dossier was paid for and manufactured by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.”
In fact, at least one federal agent was charged and pleaded guilty to his part in that intelligence community scheme against President Trump, and several others have been indicted through the ongoing work of Special Counsel John Durham. He is investigating how America’s intelligence community essentially was weaponized against a sitting president.
Multiple individuals lost their federal jobs because of their involvement in the “Russia collusion” conspiracy theory that was created apparently through the work of both federal agents and Democrat operatives, and used to try to destroy Trump’s presidency.
The CIA report described the reporting on presidential briefings as dating back to the Truman administration and documents “how the intelligence community briefs newly elected presidents.”
“Its latest chapter includes insights from the senior intelligence officials who oversaw the pre-election briefings offered to the presidential candidates in 2016, as well as briefings during the presidential transition and the delivery of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) throughout Trump’s presidency,” the CBS report said.
The CIA operatives explained at Trump’s first briefing, in August 2016 while he still was candidate, he was mainly a listener.
“At his second briefing in September, Mr. Trump asked ‘numerous questions,’ many of which ‘reflected his interest in financial and trade matters and in press reports about Russia’s reported interference in the U.S. election campaign,’” the CBS report said.
It added that the CIA did admit that the briefings “began with a delay,” as Trump’s team took some time getting up to speed.
Then the intel community briefed Trump on the “Steele dossier,” that now-debunked document that essentially included made-up allegations about the president by Democrat operatives.
The relationship between Trump and the intel community “took a turn for the worse” then.
Later, when intel officials claimed they didn’t leak the document to the media, he was “unpersuaded and embittered.”
Even so, the report suggests that Trump routinely praised the intel community for its work, and Helgerson notes, “behind closed doors, Mr. Trump’s interactions with intelligence officials were more amicable than was apparent on Twitter, where the president often expressed frustration with what he called a ‘Deep State’ seeking to undermine his presidency,” the report said.
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