'Deep state' against US-Russia proximity: Expert

After the US Justice Department appointed a special counsel to oversee an investigation into alleged links between Donald Trump and Moscow, the US president described the move as “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.” To discuss the issue, Press TV has interviewed James Jatras, a former US diplomat, and Wilmer Leon, a columnist and political scientist, both from Washington.

Jatras said the allegations made about Trump-Russia collusion is “a conspiracy of elements of deep state, all Democratic politicians, some Republican politicians and the mainstream media to throw out a president they never thought was elected, they never thought should be in the White House and they are doing everything possible to discredit him.”

“They are doing it for one reason above all, to keep him from keeping his campaign promise to improve relations with Russia and especially to work out a deal on Syria to fight terror,” the former diplomat said on Thursday night.

Jatras also quoted Dennis Kucinich, a former congressman, as saying, “The most fundamental threat to this country today is that of an unconstitutional soft coup by elements of ... the deep state, the permanent government and particularly in the intelligence services to overthrow a constitutionally elected president.”

The real problem, he said, is that it is a “witch hunt” by the deep state, while there is “no basis at all for an FBI investigation.”

Wilmer Leon, another panelist at the Debate program, said that “witch hunt is a more hyperbolic language that’s been used by Donald Trump as a way of distracting attention from what we know to be true.”

He said fact-checking website PolitiFact has shown that “85 percent of Donald Trump’s statements have proven to be either half trues or whole lies.”

So, “it is Donald Trump himself who keeps fanning the flames and pouring gasoline on these flames. It is not the deep state doing this to Donald Trump.”

The analyst further pointed to Trump’s attempt to stop investigation into his relationship with the Russians, saying the people of the United and leaders of the world need to have the utmost confidence that a full investigation should take place.

According to Leon, Trump has not been able to make the shift away from being a businessman and understanding that "everything a president says matters not only to the United States, not only to the financial markets but to the world overall.”

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