A senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he doesn’t think anyone should be listening to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Former CIA director James Woolsey, a top adviser to Trump on national security issues, weighed in on Trump using remarks from Assange to continue to raise questions about the intelligence community’s findings that Russian hackers interfered in the 2016 election.
“I don’t think there’s any point in listening to Julian Assange,” Woolsey said on “CNN Tonight.” “He’s quite a ne’er-do-well.”
Asked as a former CIA director if he would have listen to Assange or his intelligence officials, Woolsey said he doesn’t think he would have to only listen to CIA analysts.
“I would listen to someone who I think is making a cogent point and doing it with good evidence,” Woolsey said. “I don’t start from the proposition of I’ll listen to X because I like or don’t like him.”
When asked by Don Lemon about US intelligence officials telling CNN they are concerned with Trump’s public attacks, Woolsey defended Trump’s tough talk, citing politics as an element with in the intelligence community.
“They’re going to have to get used to working for a new boss,” Woolsey said. “He’s the one who won the election. And the intelligence community was frankly, I think ready, willing and able to support Hillary, but they were really stunned and not quite ready to try to figure out how to deal with the winner.”
