Donald Trump foolishly went to war with America's intelligence agencies. Now it could cost him his job

The President finally finds himself on the receiving end

Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised the intelligence services (Getty)

Donald Trump didn't need to add angry face emojis to his tweet, for people to realise that he was seething.

“I have been asking Director Comey & others, from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community,” he wrote.

This was the morning after the Washington Post had revealed, in an article by its leading national security correspondent, the President had, in an apparent breach of known precedent, shared sensitive intelligence material with the Russians.

The next day, the New York Times reported that according to a memo written by then FBI Director James Comey, Trump had asked him to drop an investigation into his sacked national security advisor Michael Flynn. Three months later, Trump fired Comey.

HR McMaster, Flynn’s successor and one of the few people in the White House able to maintain the same narrative for more than 12 hours, held a press conference to claim the leaks behind the articles were a threat to national security.

“I think the real issue - and I think that I would like to see really debated more - is our national security has been put at risk by those violating confidentiality and those releasing information to the press,” he said.

If this is true, and McMaster’s claim may be difficult to prove, then Trump and his cohorts in the White House can hardly be surprised. Since wining the election last November, Trump has repeatedly condemned the US intelligence services, accusing them of handing “fake news” to the media.

For months, he appeared to reject their assertion that Russia had sought to influence the 2016 election, dismissing their claims as coming from the same people who said, wrongly, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

At one point, he even found himself likening the people within the 17 US intelligence services, to the Nazis. This was something that earned a rebuke from Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan.

“What I do find outrageous is equating an intelligence community with Nazi Germany,” he said. “I do take great umbrage at that, and there is no basis for Mr Trump to point fingers at the intelligence community for leaking information that was already available publicly.”

Has the worm now turned? It appears so. This week, as the Post and the Times published their blockbusters, US media noted how quickly other outlets were able to confirm the claims. The suggestion was that that there were an awful lot of people out there willing to dish the dirt.

The mood among many in the intelligence community may have been summed up by Leon Panetta, who served as both Defence Secretary and CIA Director. Trump, he told CNN, was a loose cannon.

“He’s got to have some lines here,” said Panetta. “He’s got to have some guardrails. The president of the United States cannot just do or say or speak whatever the hell he wants.”

During the election campaign, Trump got his way by his bullying and bluster. He attacked everyone and anyone he wanted, from the Pope to Ted Cruz's father, and appeared to get away with it. But in attacking the intelligence services - the people who know, so to speak - where all the bodies are buried - he has committed a fatal error.

Two points need to be made.

Firstly, Trump is a long way from being impeached, if indeed he ever is. Despite the mounting clamour from those who hate him, and despite the claims of those who say he has broken his oath of office, the President has, based on the evidence that is publicly available, committed no criminal offence. Whether he had broken his oath of office is moot, and an issue that would be decided by the House Judiciary Committee.

Impeachment is about politics, not justice. At the moment, the Republicans control both the House and the Senate.

The only scenario in which they could decide to turn on Trump, would be if they calculated having him in the White House undermined their own reelection prospects in the 2018 midterms. Many members, in districts where Trump’s support is strong, would have to weigh up the fish of his voters abandoning them.

It may be that the Democrats ride such a wave of anti-Trump disgust that they take control of the House at that point, but is 18 months away.

Secondly, if Trump is eventually toppled by leaks from the intelligence services, this should give everyone cause to stop and think

Trump’s supporters have been was mocked for their references to the US’s so-called “deep state”. But there is no doubt that America’s intelligence and military complex is alive and powerful.

Intelligence officials, from Brennan to James Clapper, Obama’s Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, have all been given repeated platforms, both before Congressional committees and on 24-hour cable news, to denounce Trump and his actions.

Yet, whatever one thinks about Trump, about his haplessness, his bigotry, his apparent inadequacy to do the job, the New York tycoon was elected, by more than 60m of the American people. Clapper and Brennan were not.

Nobody who thinks Donald Trump is a danger to American democracy, should cheer if he is brought down by unelected forces.