Journalist Bob Woodward said in an interview with podcaster Tim Miller on October 17 that Dan Coats, Donald Trump’s former director of national intelligence, suspects Russian President Vladimir Putin is blackmailing the Republican nominee
On Miller’s The Bulwark Podcast, Woodward discussed how he spoke with Coats while writing his latest book, War, about Trump’s relationship with Putin during his presidency and after.
Discussing the pair’s relationship, which Coats reportedly called an “enigma,” Woodward said, “Coats who, for two and a half years was Trump’s director of national intelligence, all the intelligence agencies, including the CIA, sees this. They don’t have all of the information, but he sees it.”
He continued, “This is so strange, it is so subservient on Trump’s part. He actually asks when I discussed this with Coats several months ago, he said ‘is this blackmail?’ In other words, is Trump being blackmailed?”
Newsweek reached out to Woodward for comment via email and Coats for comment via his email at his law firm King & Spalding outside of business hours on Sunday.
Newsweek also reached out to the Trump campaign for comment via email outside of business hours on Sunday.
Coats, who has previously issued warnings on Trump’s behavior since leaving the former president’s employ, was the director of national intelligence from 2017 to 2019, before being let go from the position after disagreeing with the then president on several issues.
Woodward raises this conversation with Coats in his recently published book, which also details behind-the-scenes accounts of how President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris dealt with the Ukraine-Russia war and the conflict in the Middle East, as well as Trump’s “conducting a shadow presidency and seeking to regain political power,” according to publisher Simon & Schuster.
Soon after his book was published, it made national headlines as it revealed new information regarding Trump’s relationship with Putin and, in addition to suspicions of blackmail, alleged that the former president secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during the pandemic.
Woodward also wrote about Trump’s alleged continued relationship with Putin post-presidency and said that he had spoken with the Russian leader at least seven times since he left office, on one occasion asking a Trump aide in Mar-a-Lago to leave his office so the two could have a private phone conversation.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, confirmed Woodward’s reports regarding the COVID-19 tests, while Trump called the claims false.
Peskov did, however, deny the alleged continued contact between the former U.S. president and the Russian leader and said, “We also sent [to the United States] equipment [to fight COVID] at the beginning of the pandemic. But as for phone calls, this is not true.”
In a previous statement to Newsweek regarding Woodward’s claims, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said, “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
In his interview with Miller, Woodward also discussed Russia’s nuclear threat, comparisons of Trump and Richard Nixon, Harris’ warnings to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and more.
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