Journalist Bob Woodward mentioned in an interview with podcaster Tim Miller on October 17 that Dan Coats, Donald Trump‘s former director of nationwide intelligence, suspects Russian President Vladimir Putin is blackmailing the Republican nominee
On Miller’s The Bulwark Podcast, Woodward mentioned how he spoke with Coats whereas writing his newest e-book, Struggle, about Trump’s relationship with Putin throughout his presidency and after.
Discussing the pair’s relationship, which Coats reportedly known as an “enigma,” Woodward mentioned, “Coats who, for 2 and a half years was Trump’s director of nationwide intelligence, all of the intelligence businesses, together with the CIA, sees this. They do not have all the data, however he sees it.”
He continued, “That is so unusual, it’s so subservient on Trump’s half. He truly asks once I mentioned this with Coats a number of months in the past, he mentioned ‘is that this blackmail?’ In different phrases, is Trump being blackmailed?”
Evan Agostini/Related Press
Newsweek reached out to Woodward for remark through e mail and Coats for remark through his e mail at his legislation agency King & Spalding exterior of enterprise hours on Sunday.
Newsweek additionally reached out to the Trump marketing campaign for remark through e mail exterior of enterprise hours on Sunday.
Coats, who has previously issued warnings on Trump’s conduct since leaving the previous president’s make use of, was the director of nationwide intelligence from 2017 to 2019, earlier than being let go from the place after disagreeing with the then president on a number of points.
Woodward raises this dialog with Coats in his just lately revealed e-book, which additionally particulars behind-the-scenes accounts of how President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris handled the Ukraine-Russia battle and the battle within the Center East, in addition to Trump’s “conducting a shadow presidency and looking for to regain political energy,” in keeping with writer Simon & Schuster.
Quickly after his e-book was revealed, it made nationwide headlines because it revealed new data concerning Trump’s relationship with Putin and, along with suspicions of blackmail, alleged that the former president secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during the pandemic.
Woodward additionally wrote about Trump’s alleged continued relationship with Putin post-presidency and mentioned that he had spoken with the Russian chief not less than seven occasions since he left workplace, on one event asking a Trump aide in Mar-a-Lago to go away his workplace so the 2 may have a personal cellphone dialog.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, confirmed Woodward’s reports regarding the COVID-19 tests, whereas Trump known as the claims false.
Peskov did, nonetheless, deny the alleged continued contact between the previous U.S. president and the Russian leader and said, “We additionally despatched [to the United States] tools [to fight COVID] initially of the pandemic. However as for cellphone calls, this isn’t true.”
In a earlier assertion to Newsweek concerning Woodward’s claims, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said, “None of those made-up tales by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a very demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
In his interview with Miller, Woodward additionally mentioned Russia’s nuclear menace, comparisons of Trump and Richard Nixon, Harris’ warnings to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and extra.
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