NBC News national security contributor and former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi said Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that he believes the House Select Committee hearings of the Capitol riot investigation are showing former President Donald Trump is a “national security threat.”
Mitchell said, “It was amazing how much they were following the president’s instructions. The tweets, go after Mike Pence, that just exacerbated, inflamed them to go after Mike Pence when he condemned Mike Pence for lack of courage.”
Figliuzzi said, “We’ve seen evidence throughout the hearings of this call and response, this influence that Trump has as kind of a radicalizer-in-chief, and there is now tangible evidence of that. And the reverse is true. The choice to not act also, of course, caused this to exacerbate, get aggravated, get more violent, and then we’ve learned that at the point that Vice President Pence may have been in the most peril that afternoon, here is the President deciding to launch tweets that actually further aggravate the situation.”
He added, “But you know, there is another aspect to last night that also caught my eye as a national security analyst, and that is this concept of Trump’s inaction related to a national security threat. Matthew Pottinger brought it up, and it has not been talked about enough, but our allies, our adversaries, nations around the world were watching this, and they are wondering what is going on, is there a compromise of the United States government, is Pence in charge, is Trump in charge, why is nothing happening. I would not be surprised to learn that foreign intelligence service heads around the world, if there was a time difference and it’s nighttime in their country, that they were being awakened, advised, even perhaps heads of state being awake and saying, ‘There is something really bad going on in the United States.’ It presents a national security threat. So Trump’s inaction wasn’t just about him and a legal case to be made, but there is a national security aspect to it.”
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