Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Gaelin. Today, I'm pleased

to welcome back to the podcast Pete Strong, former deputy assistant director of the

Counter Intelligence Division of the FBI. Now adjunct professor at Georgetown University's

Walsh School of Foreign Service, an author of the book Compromised, Counter Intelligence

and the threat of Donald J. Trump, which will be coming out in paperback at the end of

the month. During his time at the FBI, Pete led the investigation into Russian interference

in the 2016 election and briefly worked on Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation

into any links or coordination between Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government.

Pete, welcome back. Reed, great to be here. Thanks.

So I want to cover a couple things. One is the immediate and the second is sort of longer

term. You know, we're 360 some days now away from January 6, 2021. And as an American, as

a former law enforcement officer and somebody who has spent probably more time than you

thought you would dealing with American politics, a year hints. How do you see things?

I'm concerned. I think a year has gone by and everything that I see is that we are

as a nation moving apart in terms of our perception of the truth. I recoil every time I see

the most recent poll where people ask about the cause of January 6 or who the actors were

behind it and they look at party lines and just in a staggering number of Republicans believe

that it was not anything related to Donald Trump, whether it was Biden or the Democrats

that something that is so factually indisputable and so clear that there could be such a difference

of opinion and not on the fringe of the parties, but very much within the mainstream of the

party is really concerning to me. And so I see a gap. I see that broadening. I think

that has enormous implications for what we're looking at at the midterm elections in 2024.

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