Former CIA Director John Brennan rejected what he called President Trump’s “sociopathic ramblings,” accusing him and others in the intelligence community of attempting to overthrow the government.
“I don’t think it’s surprising at all that we continue to hear the sociopathic ramblings of Mr. Trump claiming that there was this effort to try to prevent him from being elected or to unseat him,” Brennan said in an interview with MSNBC on Friday.
On Thursday, Trump singled Brennan out as he railed against the FBI’s use of the so-called Trump dossier to obtain a warrant to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The dossier contains scandalous and mostly unverified claims about Trump’s ties to Russia and was composed by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
“This was a coup, this was an attempted overthrow of the United States government,” said Trump. “These are sick, sick people. … Let’s see how high it goes up because it’s inconceivable when it goes to [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper, Brennan, [former FBI Director James] Comey, these people, I would imagine some other people maybe higher up also knew about it.”
Brennan also pushed back on Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s allegations that he was the one who “insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report” concerning Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
“That’s absolutely incorrect and 180 degrees from the truth,” Brennan said during an interview with MSNBC. “It was CIA that was pushing not to have it included, not to have it taken into account at all in that intelligence community assessment.”
“I testified in front of Congress and I will continue to do it,” said Brennan. “This was something that Jim Comey and the FBI thought it was appropriate that Mr. Trump, who was going to become the President of the United States, would be aware of this report that is circulating and how it could be exploited by the Russians or others to try to undermine this government.”
