Over the last several years, the call “Deep State” has been used often by both President Trump, during discussions and on social media, as well as by some Trump-supporting pundits. President Trump and the commentators who support him often use the term to describe a group of administrative insiders who want the president out of office.

These beings represent a loosely-connected web of unelected bureaucrats, often left over from previous administrations, who allegedly utilize their intel and reaching in order to disrupt the agenda of the president and his allies.

But what exactly is the Deep State? Who precisely are the Deep State musicians? What impair can they do? And what can be done to stop them?

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to speak with Bryan Dean Wright, a onetime CIA officer who now dishes as a contract instructor for the military. Wright, a self-described “lifelong Democrat, ” was not only able to answer my questions about the Deep State, but provide incredible insight into this not-so-well-understood nature of leakers and bad actors.

In part one of this interview, Wright discusses his own background in the CIA, the causes of what we would call the modern “Deep State, ” the bad actors operating from the inside, the damage they have done, and much more.

DW: What was your onetime chore at the CIA?

WRIGHT: I first dished as an operations man. These are the tribes that, in short, go abroad to draft spies and embezzle secrets. I did that for a number of years, then transitioned to the private sector and did some work in New York. I went back into the agency after a hiatus and helped as what’s called a targeting officer. That persona meets the people and organizations that can fill in the breaches of our understanding of special adversaries, precisely their leadership and their plans and planneds. I developed targeting packs of how to get in front of those people and draft them as clandestine sources.

DW: Why did you decide to leave the agency?

WRIGHT: The original reasonablenes back in the mid-2 000 s was because my brother needed to go into rehab for his alcohol addiction, and regrettably my family didn’t have the money to send him. So, I had to go in the private sector and make it. Once I was able to do that- after my brother achieved his sobriety- I got back into the agency.

And then in December of 2015, I left for the second and final time. The intellect I left then was more out of sorrow and antagonism for what I insured happening. And it genuinely gets to the issue of the “Deep State.” I met with a bunch of parties that were tied-in to some of our covert action procedures- I was reviewing and auditing them- and these major managers weren’t taking it seriously or tried to hinder my attempts. A lot of people didn’t want to have accountability for their failings. Or, secondarily, they didn’t want to have to go back to the National Security Council or even the President or Vice President and say,” Actually, what we’ve been telling you was wrong, or it wasn’t quite right .” And so I have become baffled and I really didn’t see myself being complicit with that unit of unprofessionalism at a minimum or flat out treachery at worst. So, I transitioned out.

DW: What is your primary job now?

WRIGHT: I serve as a contract instructor for the military forces- and some of those details I can’t dive into at present- but that’s part of what I do. And I invest a good deal of term writing and going on different TV outlets, Fox in particular, to talk in part about national security-related issues.

I also write and talk a lot about politics. As a lifelong Democrat, I share with my books and audiences what I see as this horrific stray by the party away from what I grew up with in the Pacific Northwest: a moderate, sensible Democratic Party. For instance, I recollect beings like Tom Foley, former Speaker of the House, who was from urban Eastern Washington. Or a guy like Cecil Andrus, a sensible , no-nonsense Democratic Governor of Idaho. These kinfolks are the Democrat who I grew up with, and my family was a part of. But that is no longer the party that we find. Instead, we insure the working party of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tom Perez, and it’s these absolute bonkers factors that I don’t identify with, are scaring, and I visualize eventually will bring the entirety of the Democratic Party down. And if that’s what has to happen, well, I hope the Republican can maintain a light on for me.

DW: So, what is the “Deep State? ” We hear it all the time in conservative media, especially on stores like Fox News. But what is the “Deep State” actually?

WRIGHT: To understand the Deep State, you have to understand a boy named Aldrich Ames. He was a CIA officer who, in the 1980 s, decided to commit treason and work for the Soviet Union, and his treachery expense the lives of many of our Soviet workers. When Ames was asked why he did it, his response was this,” I know what’s best for foreign policy and national certificate … and I’m going to act on that .” That’s the interpretation and the ethos of the Deep State. It’s an unelected group of men and women with profound powers of the surveillance position who apply those abilities to advance their own interests, whether it be personal or partisan.

And that last bit I think is important. Why do they do it? In the distant past, guys like Aldrich Ames, they’d leakage to our foes because of ego and for coin. But in the recent past, like what we’ve seen with Former FBI Director James Comey, onetime Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and onetime Director of the CIA John Brennan, they’re leaking to The New York Times or CNN because, yes ego and money, but clearly a sense of adherent confrontation. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t discount their ego and monetary incitements. I want, seem, they’ve make paid media contributorships and I’m sure it obliges them feel very important. But what we’re attend is more than that. It’s partisan, and it’s personal. I think that’s different and that’s frightening. I would say that, in essence, is the “Deep State, ” and that is what’s driving Deep State performers today.

DW: This may be a bit of a redundant question, but who are the Deep State? Who would you recognize as major Deep State performers?

WRIGHT: In the recent past, Comey, Brennan, Clapper are the most obvious, big names. But based on the IG reports, we’re likewise examining more mid-level bureaucrats, like the Lisa Pages and the Peter Strzoks and the Bruce Ohrs. These are Deep Staters: tribes who are unelected and sincerely unaccountable to anyone, applying their capability and learning to satisfy a personal agenda, irrespective of the law. That’s certainly what we’ve seen in the IG reports regarding Crossfire Hurricane, and it’s clear that these bureaucrats had no problem executing their own partisan or personal schedules trusting their relative anonymity would hide them from accountability.

I think that those individuals are just the ones we are familiar with. And I make, God willing, Attorney General Bill Barr and United Regime Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham are going to flush out other actors and making them to account, and lead to further clarity on if certainly the Comeys and Brennans and Clappers of the intelligence community can be brought forward on accuses. That’s certainly the hope if the facts allow.

DW: In what denigrate acts specifically have members of this Deep State participated?

WRIGHT: Let’s start with Comey. We know that he was leaking to The New York Times, and he wasn’t seeping because he had any tolerable sentiment that President Trump be left to no good. I represent, the IG has shown conclusively that he was leaking to advance his own personal interests. In fact,[ it] labeled Comey as a perilous instance to the tens of thousands of current and former FBI employees. So, that opens up this horrific floodgate of the Aldrich Ames ethos that, if you think that you know best for national defence or foreign policy, that you, FBI employee, can injure whomever you’d like. You, Mr. FBI or CIA employee, who has access to secret human or signals intelligence- emails, phone calls – you get to decide what cloth ought to be spilt to kneecap legislators you don’t like. Oh, and you will face no outcomes for it! That, I anticipate, is the horrific legacy that Comey leaves behind.

And again, let’s underscore something now: Comey knew early on that Trump was not going to be found guilty of having engaged in impropriety with the Russian government. Comey had participated with others in the intelligence community to investigate these allegations. He and the others knew, in early 2017 if not before, that there was nothing there. Think of this: if the intelligence community had any information in 2016 or 2017 that Trump was a Russian spy, they wouldn’t have model on it. They would have immediately come it to Mueller or tribes on Capitol hill, and they would have rightfully returned that forward to the American parties and removed the president. But that didn’t happen.

So, certainly Comey has a very clear record, illustrated record, of doing a number of things that weren’t time atypical, but that were wrong. And again, I think that’s what AG Barr and John Durham are trying to fully flush out.

I think that the other courages- John Brennan especially, but too Comey and Clapper- abused the dossier and Christopher Steele as playthings in a political game. Both Steele and his dossier were known to be erroneous in the autumn of 2016. Indeed, by mid January 2017, Brennan was specifically on record as saying he demonstrated the dossier no particular credence, according to The Wall Street Journal. Well, that’s amazing. Because they included that dossier in a brief to not only then President-elect Trump, but to then President Obama and Joe Biden and, of course, the principals on Capitol hill. Why would they have said and done? There was no law or ability significance. They knew Steele and the dossier were corroborated garbage. But they briefed it regardless. To lots of people.

As a former intelligence officer, I can tell you that this isn’t normal operating procedure. At all. You don’t brief an unvetted substantiate like the dossier to the president-elect and tell him that he’s a distorted Russian informer. And you certainly wouldn’t get it on if you had already done a degree of investigation and found that there was no veracity to any of the claims. I want, hell, you don’t even have to be an intelligence officer to understand that.

But what Steele and his dossier shortage in law or intellect appreciate, both more than made up for it in political significance. And Brennan, Comey, and Clapper knew it. They knew how damaging it would be to Trump if America were to believe the dossier’s allegations. They simply needed to give the news media a fasten to run with the claims, which were widely known in Washington but went unreported because they were unverified. So their mixture, it is about to change, was to prepare themselves the media’s necessary fasten. By their simple behave of briefing the dossier to so many, it afforded credence to the claims and that in fact the dossier existed. Naturally, the Resistance Media- which vanished all in against President Trump- was happy to distribute their propaganda.

Let me highlight: the dossier had been refuted by the intelligence community after appreciable investigation. There was no legal or intelligence appraise to briefing the dossier. In fact, the CIA at the time was calling it” internet rumor .” But Brennan, Comey, and Clapper clearly didn’t care. Why? Because they had an end goal: if they could get the media to report on this dossier, then that would be effectively the end of the Trump presidency, or certainly put the president on his heels for a couple of years. They would completely kneecap him. At least that was their hope.

So, I think that that is the gravest instance of Deep State treachery.

DW: To what magnitude does the media participate in enabling these Deep State performers to do what they miss and feel they are required to do, and how should that be approached?

WRIGHT: The most obvious and demonstrable the linkages between these Deep State performers and the media is that chaps like Comey, Brennan, and Clapper now, to varying units, have paid contributorships with media channels. Think of it: we know that they were leaking classified information to these channels when they were government employees, and now the government has chores with them. I mean, my god, what does that tell other intelligence community professionals? What are the consequence for interrupting the law? Because, as of today, my onetime colleagues can apparently leak based on their own personal or partisan schedule to the media, and then, in turn, can get a great, cushy occupation from that same media outlet when they quit or retire. That’s a horrify sample with profound outcomes to our Republic because you’re incentivizing intelligence professionals to disclose or kneecap beings they don’t like. If that takes seed, what in the blaze will prevent us from becoming Pakistan or Egypt? These countries, by the way, are run by the intelligence or military communities, sprinkled with a veneer of democracy.

Is that what we are to become? Because that really is the end result of allowing a politicized intelligence community to go unchecked. And that’s why Barr and Durham’s work is so important. These beings have to be held to account.

Now at the same time, it’s not just the media who are gaining from this. They’re too being manipulated by the Brennans, the Comeys, and the Clapper. In March of 2018, for example, The Daily Beast reported that Brennan and Clapper were doing a roadshow around the country to many elite groups and big money parties, and they stopped by Hollywood. Brennan told them that Trump would not finish out the year( 2018) as President of the United Nation; he would be removed because of his tricky liaison with Vladimir Putin and the Russians.

Clapper was also there, and they were doing this to both create and then fan the flames of hysteria. Remember that their gathering was made up of the Hollywood elites, the very individuals who control or lend mightily to the public sphere, develop narratives, form truth. So, it is not an accident that Brennan and Clapper would be there in Hollywood in March of 2018 spreading these lies. Again, they knew that the Trump/ Russia narrative wasn’t true but, as with the dossier, they needed the media to continue to manipulate the American people to achieve their political end. And who better to have in their back pocket than those Hollywood administrations who have our eyeballs and our ears, whether it be on movie screens or television screens. Brennan and Clapper needed them because they needed hysteria. And that’s precisely what they’ve been committed to. Virulently and unapologetically so.

DW: There are still denunciations, predominantly from the Left, that the “Deep State” is blamed for every bad thing that smothers the Trump presidency and the administration. It’s almost like a joke to countless beings on the Left. “Oh, the Deep State! It must be the Deep State! ” Is the idea of the Deep State in any way overblown? And if so, to what degree?

WRIGHT: You know, in 2017, when Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, was being interviewed by Rachel Maddow, she was telling him about Trump’s taking on the CIA or the intelligence community, and his response, then and now, was so illustrative and so jaw dropping.

If you recall, he said,” If you take on the intelligence community, they have six methods from Sunday to get back at you .” So, Chuck Schumer recognizes that the Deep State is real, and that they will exact revenge at a time and a sit and on beings of their choosing.

Let’s pause for a second and genuinely think about the modern Left’s response to the fact that the Deep State is real, and that these intelligence officials will decide our nation’s political wins and losers. Truly consider Chuck Schumer’s flippant adoption of it all. I can’t imagine a more terrifying thing for any person of any party to say ever- because think of the consequence of that. The modern American Left is basically saying,” You know, we desire those Deep State guys. They’re real, and we love it because Orange Man Bad. And they’ll make this person out for us. Because we just don’t like him .”

I aim, they’re incentivizing a knot of people to continue to break the law because it accommodates their temporary, short-term partisan goals. Never thoughts the fact that they’re setting a brush flaming to the Republic. I signify, it’s amazing to me knowing how many kinfolks on the Left who have been so virulently opposed to the CIA and FBI, uttered some of the sins, irrefutable sins- starting in the 40 s and ramping up through the Cold War in the 50 s, through the 70 s and 80 s- to now see that our own “progressive” leader is somehow winking and nudging with our good friends like John Brennan and the rest because they’re taking on Orange Man. So, this suggestion by the people on the Left, my fellow Democrats, who would say,” Well, that’s just silly. It’s a scheme …” Well, they need to take it up with Chuck Schumer because he belief the Deep State is real, too. And he fears them.

DW: Is this type of behavior something that has gone on for a long time?

WRIGHT: The short answer is yes. There is a history of individuals who get this profound influence when working for the FBI or the CIA or NSA and corruption it. I can tell you, I worked with individuals who expended their abilities to tap phone calls and emails to look after ex-boyfriends or ex-spouses. And those individuals were eventually found out and rightfully shot. In other messages, human frailty- or the part of the human condition that is indeed so frail as to be given profound powers and then use them for complaint- that has always existed, and that they are able to always exist. That’s why it’s so important to deport oversight of law enforcement and intelligence, and definitely military communities.

The difference, though, from that inauspiciou low level abuse of power is that the duplicity of modern Deep State performers- Comey, Brennan, and Clapper- is that they wanted to overrule the American voters. They wanted to upend the free and fair election of Donald Trump. They wanted to choose a different leader to run the commonwealth. Their purpose in leaking to the media was to take out a duly-elected president because they either didn’t like the person or they demanded Hillary Clinton to win. Many of them, I suspect, liked Clinton because they knew that they were going to have slots of sovereignty or force in her administration.

That severity of boldnes I think is new, and I think that it is incredibly dangerous. And the lack of focus on that treachery is one of the profound lost opportunities of our political class, including information on the Left, of the past few years. They could have said,” The actions of Comey, Clapper, and Brennan were horrifically bad and they should face justice. And, meanwhile, we defend the president on X, Y, and Z programs .” That “wouldve been” the right thing to do. As opposition political parties, you can do both of those things, but that’s not what the Left has done. That’s certainly not what Pelosi and Schumer and our friends Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Jerry Nadler are doing right now with the impeachment.

All of this has been 100% focused on bringing down the president from day one, instead of having a much more balanced, nuanced coming to his presidency. And I remember, and candidly I hope, that that’s why the Democratic Party loses in 2020. I don’t know of another way to be disposed of the blight that is in Washington, and within the leadership of the Democratic Party. Because if a progressive triumphs- Sen. Elizabeth Warren or, God forbid, Sen. Bernie Sanders- or even though they are Joe Biden earns, the lesson for the Democratic leadership, the lesson for the media, will not be that their treachery was bad, but that it worked.

In part two of this interview, which will be liberated on Sunday, Wright talks about what the Deep State would look like if a Democrat prevails in 2020, what can be done to root out these revile actors, what the media can do, the dangers of normalizing socialism, and more.

I’d like to thank Bryan Dean Wright for taking the time to speak with me about such an important issue. For more, you can follow Wright on Twitter, and check out his official website.

Read more: dailywire.com