Steve Hall

It's my theory that Butina is not actually a staff officer of any Russian intelligence service, she is somebody who has been co-opted by somebody else in The Russian government to do a job.

Even if you had an intercept of the Crown Prince saying,' Yes, kill Jamal Khashoggi,' there would still be an analytical piece to that, the idea that The CIA or NSA or any of the intelligence organizations have to come up with DNA-style proof is something that both politicians and practitioners of intelligence know is sort of a false premise.

Before the Helsinki summit, I was not prepared to go to the darkest corner in the room and say there is kompromat -- there is compromising information -- on Donald Trump, after... I saw Donald Trump treat( Putin) in a fashion that is just inexplicable, the only conclusion that I can come to is... I think there is information and data out there that implies there is indeed compromising information that Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump. Why else would he treat him that way ?

You're going to incentivize more of this, not just by Russia -- North Korea is North Korea. These rouge states, these authoritarian states... know that all they have to do is nab one American -- whether it's a business person, a tourist, a professional, like Brittney Griner -- and then they can bargain for whatever it is that they want.

The first part of the war is over and President Putin lost the first part of the war, much to President Putin chagrin, i think we are going to be in this for the long run and I think this is going to be war of attrition. It is going to be very hard on Ukraine.

I think the Ukrainians, to put it mildly, are taking this with a large grain of salt. I can't imagine that anybody, really, at this point, believes much of anything that Russia says.