'Sold to the highest bidder': Ex-FBI agent urges intelligence to protect state secrets

Former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa has an urgent warning for members of the U.S. intelligence community: before Donald Trump takes office again, take steps to prevent your secrets from being compromised from above.

"I hope the IC uses the next couple of months to protect its sources because our national security secrets are about to be sold to the highest bidder," wrote Rangappa in a post to X on Wednesday.

Rangappa has frequently warned about the dangers the former president, now president-elect, poses to national security, saying that his pattern of lies and deception indicate Russia has "kompromat" on him.

While there's no indication Trump sold state secrets to hostile powers when he was last in office, he was accused of showing highly classified defense information to people who happened to be at his private clubs in Florida and New Jersey — which was the basis for special counsel Jack Smith's federal charges against him in Florida.

Those charges were eventually thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon, a jurist Trump himself appointed, on the basis of a novel legal theory from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that Smith wasn't properly appointed to the special counsel role.

Smith had an appeal of that decision in the works, but new reports indicate he is preparing to leave his post and wind down that case, as well as the election conspiracy case, to respect longstanding Justice Department policy against criminally charging a sitting president.