One of the standard warnings attached to US intelligence reports is that the source of a report intends “to influence as well as inform”. The caveat does not mean that the source’s reporting is wrong or should be discounted, but that the source also has an agenda.

Craig Unger’s new book, American Kompromat, should be read with a similar understanding, for it opens with the presumption that former President Donald Trump is, as former CIA director Michael Hayden described him, “a clear and present danger”. Unger starts from the premise that Trump is a Kremlin asset and proceeds to advance the argument with great detail.

Washington Post