Trump’s behavior during the campaign led Michael Morrell, a former acting director of the CIA, to declare in an op-ed the summer before the election that Putin had recruited Trump as “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” Indeed, Trump’s fragile ego, greed and need for admiration make him ripe for such exploitation. And Putin is a master manipulator, who spent 16 years in the KGB exploiting the vulnerabilities of his targets. James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, observed in December of 2017 that Putin "knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president."

Source: Los Angeles Times April 18, 2019 20:26 UTC