Interactions between Trump and Putin ‘raise significant questions’: Former deputy FBI director

Donald Trump serves Russia's interests and maintains a “subservient” relationship with Vladimir Putin, a former FBI official said.

Andrew McCabe, who was deputy director of the FBI until Trump fired him in 2018, made the comments on A decision Podcast in which he said there were “significant questions” about the former president's interactions with Russia and its leader.

When asked if Trump was an asset to Moscow, McCabe replied, “Yes, I am.” Although McCabe did not classify Trump as a recruited, knowing asset in the traditional sense, he did believe that the former president “has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States.”

Newsweek has asked the Trump team for comment.

McCabe said Trump's dealings with the Russian president, “whether in phone calls, in-person meetings or in the things he has said publicly about Putin, all raise significant questions,” as do his views on NATO and the war in Ukraine started by Putin.

McCabe helped lead the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump-Moscow ties that were the subject of scrutiny during the former president's tenure in the White House.

He was fired in March 2018, shortly before his retirement, and was the subject of a criminal investigation for allegedly lying about a media leak. The investigation was closed in 2020, and the next year McCabe reached a settlement with the Justice Department.

During the presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Trump caused controversy with his statement that Putin would not have invaded if he had been in the White House. Also because he did not say that a victory for Ukraine was in the US interest. Rather, it was best for Washington to “end this war” and “negotiate an agreement.”

McCabe said on the podcast, co-hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency, that there were “very serious questions” about why Trump “has such a subservient admiration for Vladimir Putin that no other American president – Republican or Democrat – has ever shown.”

On Russian state television, Kremlin propagandists spoke openly about favoring a Trump victory in November, partly because of Trump's opposition to further American military aid to Kyiv.

“Perhaps it is simply a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue, which is always a problem,” McCabe said, suggesting another possibility: “There is some kind of relationship or a desire for a relationship of some kind, whether it be economic or business.” However, none of these possibilities have been “proven.”