Ex-NSA Technical Division Director John Schindler told the International Center for Defense and Security that President Trump’s Russian ties are about to lead to not only his own downfall but that he’s on the precipice of taking out much of the Republican Party when he goes.

The ex-Naval War College Professor gave these remarks to the Lennart Meri Conference in Estonia:

Trump’s downfall is coming, thanks to his blatant ties to the Kremlin, which the FBI is investigating, and that process will lead to a large-scale political cleansing in Washington which will be traumatic yet necessary.

Now that Trump’s Russian Tea Party in the White House and Comey’s poison pill memos have been revealed, John Schindler’s words have become prophetic.

The Washington Post’s bombshell report tonight reveals that Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Rep. Steve Scalise discussed Trump and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher getting funding from Russia:

Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

House Republicans have kept the terrible secret of this foreknowledge ever since.

Here’s the transcript:

John Schindler wrote about the somber intelligence conference Estonia, whose capital is the closest of NATO’s allies to Moscow, in his column in The Observer this week:

Current events are difficult to watch, especially for Estonians and other NATO members who spent the last Cold War on the losing side, through no choice of their own. For those enslaved by the Soviets, the United States was a beacon of law, liberty and democracy, and to see American politics descend into ugly farce under President Trump makes for a depressing spectacle. Europeans are hardly alone here. The danger to the venerable American system of checks-and-balances presented by Trump and his cavalier attitude toward the rule of law was just expressed concisely by James Clapper — who until recently was the Director of National Intelligence — when he stated that with Trump in the White House, “our institutions are under assault internally.” Clapper further pronounced that the president’s unceremonious removal of the FBI director, who was leading the counterintelligence investigation of Team Trump, represents “another victory on the scoreboard” for Russia.

What’s important to understand is that no matter the elation that partisans may feel in being vindicated, the Republican complicity in compromising America’s democracy is a national disaster.

The GOP knew about Putin’s rise within their party, but kept it secret.