Fmr CIA Official Jeremy Bash Blasts Trump Over Reports Russian Agent Fed Biden Disinformation to Giuliani: ‘Straight-Up Collusion’

Former CIA and Pentagon chief of staff Jeremy Bash blasted President Donald Trump over recent intelligence reports that his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was coordinating with a covert Russian agent to assist the president’s re-election.

Speaking on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Bash tore into the president over a secret CIA assessment, first reported in the Washington Post, that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “probably directing” Andrii Derkach to feed disinformation to Giuliani in order to damage Trump’s 2020 rival. Giuliani, during a lengthy interview on CNN nearly two weeks ago, admitted that he had met with Derkach, but repeatedly refused to believe the man had any connection to the Russian government and denied that Derkach was offering any dirt on Biden to aid Trump’s re-election.

That Post report was subsequently confirmed by NBC News on Tuesday.

Bash pulled no punches in his damning assessment of the Trump campaign’s alleged complicity in soliciting Russian interference in a second consecutive presidential election.

“If this report is accurate, this is collusion,” Bash declared. “Why do I say that? Because according to this report, Andrii Derkach is an agent of the Russian Federation. His cover story is a Ukrainian lawmaker, but according to this report of the assessment, he is controlled by the Kremlin. Point two is that Rudy Giuliani has been working with him, and of course, he is an agent of Trump and the Trump campaign. That’s one plus one equals two. That is collusion. That’s a direct tie between a known Russian agent and the Trump campaign to try to do what? To denigrate Joe Biden and to support Donald Trump in his re-election.”

Deadline host Nicolle Wallace then asked Bash to elaborate.

“Unless I’m missing something, this is – this is black and white,” Bash added. “We know that the objective of the Russian intelligence service, according to what’s been previously disclosed to the ODNI is to support Donald Trump in the 2020 re-election. And we know that Rudy Giuliani, who is, of course, not only Donald Trump’s counselor, number one clearleader, but his bag man on dirty tricks in the election, has met with Derkach in at least three occasions — to do what? To talk about geopolitics? No. To try to dig up false dirt on Joe Biden and help Donald Trump win re-election. That is straight up collusion with a foreign adversary’s intelligence power to try to get the president re-elected. We don’t need a Mueller report. We don’t even need a Senate committee intelligence report. It’s right here for everybody to see.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.