A retired Army intelligence officer on Monday dismissed the idea that Russia was working to ensure Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, and said that theory makes no sense because Russia doesn’t gain anything from a Trump victory.
“The Russians would not benefit from a President Trump,” said retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, on WMAL radio Monday. “There’s no upside for a President Trump in the Russian influence in the world.”
“Why would you want to change running the table with Hillary Clinton in charge, picking up where President Obama” left off, he asked. That’s an apparent reference to Russia’s move against Ukraine, and its continued effort to frustrate U.S. goals in Syria, moves that have not prompted much of a response from the Obama administration beyond diplomatic warnings.
Shaffer spoke after a Friday report in the Washington Post that said there is a general consensus in the intelligence community that Russia was pushing for Trump, and tried to help him to leaking emails from Democratic organizations and Clinton’s campaign team. Those emails were released over the course of the campaign, and some say they were a factor in Clinton’s defeat.
But Shaffer said he doesn’t understand the central premise of this argument: that Russia would somehow gain from having Trump in the White House.
“It’s not in their interest,” he said. “I just don’t see how the Russians would benefit from a President Trump.”
Shaffer, a retired Army reserve lieutenant colonel who has written books about national security, accused the CIA of playing political games. He said CIA Director John Brennan is an Obama loyalist, and said it’s become clear that Brennan is acting politically.
“This is purely political, and I believe that John Brennan is a political animal,” he said, noting that he has talked to several former CIA officials about this. “Everything they are telling me is Brennan is doing this out of loyalty to President Obama.”
“It’s about undermining Trump, that’s what it is,” he said. “It’s called information operations, information warfare, and that’s what I believe is going on.”
Shaffer also said he is hearing that the FBI isn’t backing up the CIA’s claim that Russia was pushing for Trump’s election.
