"Trump has privately said that foreign spies can damage [US] relations with their host countries and undermine his personal relationships with their leaders", CNN reported, citing unnamed sources.
In addition to this, Trump has reportedly expressed doubts about the credibility of the information they provide, with one source telling CNN that the president believes spies are people who are selling out their country.
Prior to that, CNN reported that the US had exfiltrated a Russian with access to President Vladimir Putin, who had been spying for the United States for many years, in part because of fears that Trump had disclosed US intelligence in a May 2017 meeting with Russian officials.
The story was widely criticised by administration officials as inaccurate, but the New York Times went further in a follow-up story. The Times reported there was no evidence that Trump had endangered the source and that media scrutiny of CIA sources alone was the impetus for the extraction.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin spokesman stated that ex-Russian official Oleg Smolenkov, who has been dubbed a suspected CIA spy in the Russian media, used to work for the presidential administration and was fired years ago.
