Trump’s ‘sociopathic ramblings’ condemned by former CIA director John Brennan

Former CIA director John Brennan has railed against Donald Trump‘s “sociopathic ramblings” after he called special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation an attempted “coup” on his presidency.

Mr Trump made the comment in a phone interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Thursday evening and accused senior intelligence figures, including Mr Brennan, of being involved in the supposed plot.

Speaking to MSNBC, Mr Brennan said: “I don’t think it is surprising at all that we continue to hear these sociopathic ramblings of Mr Trump claiming there was this effort to try to prevent him from being elected or to try to unseat him.

“I welcome any type of, you know, continued investigation in terms of what we did during that period of time that we were in government. And I’ve testified in front of congress, and I’d be happy to do it again.”

Mr Brennan also hit back at Kentucky Republican senator Rand Paul’s allegations that he had pushed to include British ex-spy Christoper Steele‘s “dirty dossier” in a briefing to Mr Trump during the transition.

“That’s absolutely incorrect and 180 degrees from the truth,” Mr Brennan said. “It was CIA that was pushing not to have it included, not to be taken into account at all in that intelligence community assessment.”

The full, partially redacted report on Mr Mueller’s investigation was released earlier this month. While it found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, it did state that Russia interfered with the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” with the goal of electing Mr Trump.

The report also revealed that Mr Trump tried to get Mr Mueller fired after he was appointed to head the investigation, in a series of efforts widely deemed to constitute attempted obstruction of justice.

Mr Trump and other Republican politicians have since called for a follow-up investigation into intelligence officials who began monitoring the Trump campaign ahead of the 2016 election without warning.

In his interview with MSNBC, Mr Brennan went on to insist that the fault for any Russian election interference lies with the Trump administration, and not with the Obama administration that was in power during the 2016 election.

“The last administration put out an intelligence community assessment and tried to be as comprehensive and transparent as possible about what the Russians were doing,” he said.

“Unfortunately, this administration and Donald Trump refuses to continue to acknowledge what the Russians did and to take steps to prevent them from doing it in the future.”