As you could undoubtedly never forget, Trump shared classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when they visited the White House in 2017 (pictured above) and that meeting alarmed more than just the public.
According to a new report from CNN, American intelligence believed Trump posed a great enough threat to their sources that they extracting a spy from Moscow as a precaution.
The removal happened at a time of wide concern in the intelligence community about mishandling of intelligence by Trump and his administration. Those concerns were described to CNN by five sources who served in the Trump administration, intelligence agencies and Congress.
Those concerns continued to grow in the period after Trump's Oval Office meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov. Weeks after the decision to extract the spy, in July 2017, Trump met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg and took the unusual step of confiscating the interpreter's notes. Afterward, intelligence officials again expressed concern that the President may have improperly discussed classified intelligence with Russia, according to an intelligence source with knowledge of the intelligence community's response to the Trump-Putin meeting.
Knowledge of the Russian covert source's existence was highly restricted within the US government and intelligence agencies. According to one source, there was "no equal alternative" inside the Russian government, providing both insight and information on Putin.
Trump and his lackeys have already attacked CNN for reporting this and while I do not doubt the details of CNN's report, I believe the veracity of the report will be confirmed in the near future when Trump turns his attention toward Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo was the director of the CIA when this happened meaning he made the decision to extract the spy from Moscow.
Everything we know about Trump tells us he would never accept responsibility for his own actions and, at least privately, he'll probably attack Pompeo for making the original decision and for CNN's reporting of it. A fallout between the two of them may not be too far ahead of us.
The next time Trump needs a fall guy for another foreign policy blunder, Pompeo is on deck.