Former CIA Director Michael Hayden is not ruling out Americans being indicted as special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election goes on, as he believes the indictments will not end with the 12 Russian officers who are facing charges of hacking into Democratic Party servers.
"The richer in detail we get, the more I begin to believe that we're probably going to be seeing a widening circle (of indictments) here," Hayden told CNN's Jake Tapper, while adding that the wording in the indictment did not specifically say no Americans were involved, and also saying Department of Justice officials were not stating an opinion at this time.
"The indictment clearly says, 'We take no view on whether Americans were involved,'" he said. "It doesn't say there were no Americans involved."
The indictments, he continued, are "consistent with the assessment of the intelligence community" that Russia interfered in the election, and has "magnificent" forensic detail in what the FBI was able to put together about "who did what, when and what time, with what tools, for what purpose, against what target."
"This is largely, I think, forensic information," said Hayden. "Imagine what the Mueller team has available with regard to this activity from other sources that they would clearly not choose to put in what would be a public indictment."
White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters called the indictments "what we have been saying all along" and Trump's attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, called the indictments "good news," but still demanded Mueller's investigation come to an end.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, pinned the charges to the Obama administration, tweeting Saturday that the "stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration. Why didn't they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?"
Earlier in the day, while at a press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May, the president continued to call Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt." Tapper noted that Rosenstein had already told Trump the indictments were coming.
Trump's reaction, said Hayden, allowed him to "create his own reality for ... the utility of the moment."
"His departure is for a lot of what he says and does, is not what you and I would call objective reality," said Hayden. "It's what he needs at the moment. Some people, when I get into arguments, say look what he does, not what he says."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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