Background Briefing: July 10, 2025
Trump’s Deliberate Effort to Destroy the FBI is Going Great Guns with Patel and Bongino in Charge
We begin with what appears to be a deliberate effort to destroy the FBI from within to satisfy Trump by stopping investigations into white collar crime and corruption as well as counterintelligence investigations into Russian subversion given Trump apparent subservience to Putin. With a senior FBI official forced to resign because he maintained a friendship with former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok who is on both Trump’s and Patel’s enemies list, we examine the toxic workplace at the FBI under the leadership of two dangerously unqualified and deranged ideologues Patel and Bongino. Joining us is whistleblower and former FBI Special Agent who Patel has targeted, Johnathan Buma, who was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on March 17, 2025 and charged with disclosing confidential records, but is now out on bail. A 15-year veteran of the agency, in January 2022, he filed a whistleblower complaint and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing the agency of political bias and alleging “numerous acts of intelligence repression.”
Trump’s Vengeance and Obsessive War Against Reality Over Russia’s Help in Electing Him Has the Former Heads of the CIA and FBI Now Under Investigation
Then we investigate the DOJ investigations into the former head of the CIA and the former head of the FBI which are driven by Trump’s vengeance as a result of his war against reality in his obsessive effort to trying the create an alternative reality to the very real fact that the Russians helped elect him in 2016. Joining us is Kent Harrington, a former senior CIA analyst who served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and Chief of Station in Asia. He has an article at his Substack First and Second Thoughts, “Be Careful Who You Vote For: Trump Dumps on Rural Georgia.”
The Growing Danger of Nuclear War From a Trillion Dollar US Nuclear Buildup Over the Next Ten Years
Then finally we assess the growing danger of nuclear war as the trillion dollar Trump defense budget has the United States engaged in a massive program to rebuild and upgrade its entire nuclear arsenal, at an estimated cost of a trillion dollars in the next decade. Trump’s nuclear weapons spree will include new nuclear bombs and upgraded delivery systems that enhance the capacity to wage nuclear war. Joining us is David Cortright, former director of SANE, co-founder of Win Without War, and professor emeritus at Notre Dame University. He is the author or co-editor of over 20 books, including Civil Society, Peace and Power and Drones and the Future of Armed Conflict, and also is the editor of Peace Policy, an online journal published by the Kroc Institute. blogs at davidcortright.net and has an article we discuss at The Nation, “Did You Know That the Risk of Nuclear War Is Greater Now Than in Decades?”