Former FBI Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi slammed the president and his Republican allies in Congress for crafting a memo that “weaponizes” classified information for political reasons.
“This is cringe-worthy stuff for a counterintelligence professional,” Figliuzzi said in an interview on MSNBC’s AM Joy. “It’s really a worst-case scenario.”
Video:
The exchange between Joy Reid and Frank Figliuizzi:
REID: Frank, did you ever think you would live to see the day, you know, that — you worked in counterintelligence for the FBI — that politicians and an administration would literally use national security information, use the personal text messages of FBI agents, cherry picked to find the ones that make their case, make the agents look bad, would attack their own intelligence services and jeopardize national security in the view of the FBI by putting out this absurd memorandum from Devin Nunes all to protect one guy, to protect the President of the United States from justice?
FIGLIUZZI: This is cringe-worthy stuff for a counterintelligence professional. It’s the weaponization of classified intelligence for political purposes. Look, this is the stuff of third-world countries, the stuff of countries that I worked against in terms of communist nations in terms of controlling their Intel. This is bad stuff. It doesn’t end well for us.
The effort by Trump and Republicans to publish a memo full of inaccuracies and ommissions – all to undermine their own intelligence agencies and Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation – is something we would expect from an authoritarian regime, but not the United States of America.
The president’s latest decision to refuse to release the Democratic response memo is further proof that his administration isn’t interested in transparency – they simply wanted to weaponize classified intelligence for some short-term political cover.
As the former FBI official said on Saturday, he spent a career fighting back against countries who used these practices to wield power and influence over its people. Now, with Donald Trump at the helm, the United States has become one of those nations.
It is, indeed, a worst-case scenario.
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