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Fox News contributor and former CIA Moscow station chief Dan Hoffman praised President Donald Trump for “obfuscating” the real reason behind CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s mysterious visit to Russia.
Hoffman joined John Roberts on America Reports on Wednesday after Roberts reported on the story and Trump chalking up the visit to “semi-routine” despite speculation flying about the meeting. The last CIA director to visit Moscow was in 2021.
Hoffman argued the real reason for the visit was likely increased threats against NATO allies in Europe. He said Ratcliffe likely felt the situation posed an “imminent national security threat,” leading to the unusual in-person visit with intelligence officials under Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The former CIA official said:
I’ll give President Trump a lot of credit for obfuscating on what was really going on behind the scenes because what he’s doing with the president’s doing is protecting this secret clandestine channel which we have used in the past to negotiate over contentious issues and resolve issues of mutual interest to our nations, like the 2010 spy swap. It’s not subjected to any public scrutiny. You can have very frank and direct conversations, so I think that’s what’s going on.
I think that there had to be some sort of intelligence collection about an imminent national security threat or an issue that came up that led to this important trip by Director Ratcliffe. Director Ratcliffe has a lot of things going on every day, the fact that he chose to make this long trip means it’s something important. Now to get to your question about what it is exactly, that’s what the speculation is going to start. What I would say most likely is the fact that Russia has escalated threats in Europe to NATO members.
Ratcliffe was in meetings with Russian intelligence officials on Tuesday. The CIA did not comment on the trip, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskovconfirmed the visit and said Ratcliffe did not meet with Putin.
During an interview with Glenn Beck, Trump insisted Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow was nothing out of the ordinary.
“John Ratcliffe is a fantastic guy. He’s the head of the CIA, and he is not in there for any of the things you said,” Trump said after Beck noted the speculation.
The president did make reference to Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine.
“Now something may come out, you know, out of it,” he said. “Frankly, they both want to see it ended at this point.”
Watch above via Fox News.
Jason Cohen contributed to this report.
The post Ex-CIA Station Chief in Moscow Tells Fox That John Ratcliffe’s Russia Trip Was Likely About an ‘Imminent National Security Threat’ first appeared on Mediaite.
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