Ex-CIA Chief Panetta: We’ve ‘Been in a Constitutional Crisis for a Period of Time Here’

Former CIA chief Leon Panetta says that we are not just headed towards a constitutional crisis––thanks to President Donald Trump‘s erratic behavior we’ve been there “for a period of time.”

Panetta’s remarks came during a conversation with Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Friday just hours after the New York Times dropped a bombshell Rod Rosenstein report suggesting that the Deputy Attorney General considered secretly taping Trump and recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment.

The remarks also come on the same day as news broke that Trump was backing off his plan to publicly release documents related to the Russian probe.

Referring to the latter, Panetta said he sees Trump’s decision as “additional evidence” of  the president’s “erratic behavior.”

Then, when asked if the nation was headed towards a Constitutional crisis,  Panetta said this:

“I, frankly, think that we have been in a constitutional crisis for a period of time here because this president has been erratic, because he operates by chaos, because he makes decisions without thinking about the consequences of those decisions. I think all of that raises concerns about whether or not our system of checks and balances is working effectively to try to make sure that this president doesn’t do something that could be harmful to the country.”

Watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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