John Kiriakou suggested that President Trump could implement a proposed program tracking and penalizing employers of undocumented workers on visas, calling Trump “a dealmaker” who might be able to broker such a compromise.[1]
Kiriakou also says he applied for a pardon under Trump on the last day of Trump’s first term, with public support from figures including Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Brian Kilmeade — support he attributes to the fact that the officials who had targeted him (Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and John Brennan) later targeted Trump as well.[2] In a separate account of that same first-term pardon push, Kiriakou says Tucker Carlson personally lobbied Trump to pardon him alongside Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and that Trump had agreed to do it — until, on the last day of his presidency, Senator Mitch McConnell called and had the pardons killed, warning that pardoning Assange and Snowden would cost Trump control of the Republican Senate caucus during his upcoming impeachment vote.[3]
Discussing how pardons are typically obtained, Kiriakou cites Trump’s blanket pardon of the January 6 protesters as an example of a president issuing a sweeping pardon outright, comparable to Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon of Vietnam War draft dodgers.[4]
On defense policy, Kiriakou noted that Trump asked Congress for an 8% year-over-year cut to the defense budget for five straight years — a 45% cut overall, which no Democrat in American history has ever proposed — calling the idea “absolutely fantastic,” though he doubts Congress will allow it.[5] He also says that despite Trump’s new signage and repeated claims, the Department of Defense’s name has not legally changed to “Department of War,” since only Congress can rename a federal department.[6] Kiriakou relays an account from a friend who was the official White House photographer under Obama: four days after the 2016 election, when Trump came to meet Obama, he “looked sick and scared” because he hadn’t expected to win.[7]
Kiriakou has also criticized Trump’s disclosure of classified information to Russian officials during his first term, describing it not as a declassification but simply blurting out third-country intelligence without the originating country’s permission — damage, he says, to bilateral intelligence-sharing relationships going forward.[8] On the 2016 election, Kiriakou says he discussed the statute-of-limitations question surrounding the “Russiagate” investigation into Trump on Matt Gaetz’s podcast.[9]