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NERMEEN SHAIKH: Were looking at the growing scandal over the Trump administrations alleged dealings with Russia before and after the November election. In early January, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show and suggested the intelligence community may try to get back at Donald Trump.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So, even for a practical, supposedly, hard-nosed businessman, hes being really dumb to do this.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, in January.

Some supporters of Trump, including Breitbart News, are now accusing the intelligence agencies of attempting to wage a "deep state coup" against the president. Meanwhile, some critics of Trump are openly embracing such activity, like Bill Kristol, the prominent Republican analyst who founded The Weekly Standard. He wrote on Twitter, "Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state."

So, still with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, speaking to us from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Glenn, explain what the deep state is, and respond.

GLENN GREENWALD: The deep state, although theres no precise or scientific definition, generally refers to the agencies in Washington that are permanent power factions. They stay and exercise power even as presidents who are elected come and go. They typically exercise their power in secret, in the dark, and so theyre barely subject to democratic accountability, if theyre subject to it at all. Its agencies like the CIA, the NSA and the other intelligence agencies, that are essentially designed to disseminate disinformation and deceit and propaganda, and have a long history of doing not only that, but also have a long history of the worlds worst war crimes, atrocities and death squads. This is who not just people like Bill Kristol, but lots of Democrats are placing their faith in, are trying to empower, are cheering for as they exert power separate and apart fromin fact, in opposition tothe political officials to whom theyre supposed to be subordinate.

And you gothis is not just about Russia. You go all the way back to the campaign, and what you saw was that leading members of the intelligence community, including Mike Morell, who was the acting CIA chief under President Obama, and Michael Hayden, who ran both the CIA and the NSA under George W. Bush, were very outspoken supporters of Hillary Clinton. In fact, Michael Morell went to The New York Times, and Michael Hayden went to The Washington Post, during the campaign to praise Hillary Clinton and to say that Donald Trump had become a recruit of Russia. The CIA and the intelligence community were vehemently in support of Clinton and vehemently opposed to Trump, from the beginning. And the reason was, was because they liked Hillary Clintons policies better than they liked Donald Trumps. One of the main priorities of the CIA for the last five years has been a proxy war in Syria, designed to achieve regime change with the Assad regime. Hillary Clinton was not only for that, she was critical of Obama for not allowing it to go further, and wanted to impose a no-fly zone in Syria and confront the Russians. Donald Trump took exactly the opposite view. He said we shouldnt care who rules Syria; we should allow the Russians, and even help the Russians, kill ISIS and al-Qaeda and other people in Syria. So, Trumps agenda that he ran on was completely antithetical to what the CIA wanted. Clintons was exactly what the CIA wanted, and so they were behind her. And so, theyve been trying to undermine Trump for many months throughout the election. And now that he won, they are not just undermining him with leaks, but actively subverting him. Theres claims that theyre withholding information from him, on the grounds that they dont think he should have it and can be trusted with it. They are empowering themselves to enact policy.

Now, I happen to think that the Trump presidency is extremely dangerous. You just listed off in your newsin your newscast that led the show, many reasons. They want to dismantle the environment. They want to eliminate the safety net. They want to empower billionaires. They want to enact bigoted policies against Muslims and immigrants and so many others. And it is important to resist them. And there are lots of really great ways to resist them, such as getting courts to restrain them, citizen activism and, most important of all, having the Democratic Party engage in self-critique to ask itself how it can be a more effective political force in the United States after it has collapsed on all levels. That isnt what this resistance is now doing. What theyre doing instead is trying to take maybe the only faction worse than Donald Trump, which is the deep state, the CIA, with its histories of atrocities, and say they ought to almost engage in like a soft coup, where they take the elected president and prevent him from enacting his policies. And I think it is extremely dangerous to do that. Even if youre somebody who believes that both the CIA and the deep state, on the one hand, and the Trump presidency, on the other, are extremely dangerous, as I do, theres a huge difference between the two, which is that Trump was democratically elected and is subject to democratic controls, as these courts just demonstrated and as the media is showing, as citizens are proving. But on the other hand, the CIA was elected by nobody. Theyre barely subject to democratic controls at all. And so, to urge that the CIA and the intelligence community empower itself to undermine the elected branches of government is insanity. That is a prescription for destroying democracy overnight in the name of saving it. And yet thats what so many, not just neocons, but the neocons allies in the Democratic Party, are now urging and cheering. And its incredibly warped and dangerous to watch them do that.

AMY GOODMAN: And The Wall Street Journal's report that says now intelligence officials are not giving President Trump all the information because they're concerned about what hell do with it, not to mention intelligence agencies of other countries deeply concerned about what Trump will do with it, and particularly concerned about what he might share with Russia?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, so, first of all, theres a media issue here, which is that if you look at The Wall Street Journal report, its pretty much exactly the same as every other significant report about Russia over the last six months, many of which have proven to be completely false. Its based on anonymous officials making extremely vague claims. Even The Wall Street Journal says, "We dont know whos doing this, withholding information. We dont know how much information is being withheld."

Secondly, the idea that Donald Trump is some kind of an agent or a spy of Russia, or that he is being blackmailed by Russia and is going to pass secret information to the Kremlin and endanger American agents on purpose, is an incredibly crazy claim that has been nowhere proven to be true. It reminds me of the kind of things Glenn Beck used to say about Obama while he stood at his chalkboard and drew thosethose unstable charts that he drew, these wild conspiracy theories that are without evidence.

We ought to have a serious, sober, structured investigation of the claims that Russia hacked the DNC and John Podestas emails and that there were improper ties between Donald Trump and the Russians, and that ought to be made public so that we can see the information. But this constant media obsession of leaking whatever someone whispers to them about Donald Trump and Russia, because they know it will get their reporters huge numbers of retweets on Twitter and tons of traffic by people who are being fed what they want to hear, is really feeding into the worst kind of hysteria and even fake news that the media says theyre trying to combat. These are really serious claims that merit serious investigation, and thats exactly what were not getting.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, in a recent piece in The Intercept by one of your colleagues, they write, "If in fact all of this is 'non-sense,' Trump has the power as president to make that clear immediatelyby declassifying all government intercepts of communications between Russian nationals and anyone in his orbit." So, do you think, Glenn, that Trump ought to be doing that?

GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, its an interesting point, because, for example, there have been lots of claims made about the communications that General Flynn had with Russian diplomats and what these transcripts supposedly reflect, and yet nobody has seen the transcripts. Weve seen little bits and pieces of them. We havent seen the whole transcript. We ought to see that whole transcript. And my colleague, Jon Schwarz, who wrote that piece, is absolutely right that its within President Trumps power to order it instantly declassified. Theres no review of that decision, and then it could be made public.

On the other hand, it is really bizarre, just as a reporter who has been in the middle of a controversy for the last four years about the leaking of classified information, to hear people suggest that the president now ought to take the most sensitive intercepts that the government is capable of obtaining, which is how they eavesdrop on Russian officials inside the Kremlin, and just toss them to the public like theres no problem at all with doing that. I think that what youre seeing here is this really disturbing double standard, that all weve heard since the war on terror is that classified information is sacred and anybody who leaks it is treasonous and satanic and belongs in jail for a really long time, and now classified information seems to be something thats just a plaything, like something that we just toss around for fun if it serves a certain agenda. And I think that thats one of the issues thats bothering me about the way this discourse is unfolding.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, were going to break, then come back and ask you about the Trump-Netanyahu news conference yesterday. Were also going to want to talk about Yemen and the news that the Pentagon is considering U.S. ground troops in Syria. This is Democracy Now! Were talking to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald. Stay with us.

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Greenwald: Empowering the "Deep State" to Undermine Trump is Prescription for Destroying Democracy - Democracy Now!