“I know I've been targeted either by trolling attacks or been notified by the FBI, through the think tank, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, that they were a target of malware attacks. I know I'm on that list. If I speak today my bank accounts could very well be compromised, I could be discredited through compromising materials—some true, some false.

”But I think the biggest concern is that I'm not confident right now that the U.S. government would actually come to bat for me.

“I've seen Pres. Trump call for Russia to leak emails against a political opponent; I've seen him discredit the U.S. intellgience committee to cite conspiracies that he's seen on his Twitter feed. So if I say things that the Trump administration doesn't like, or that are counter to Putin, I'm not sure it's not, you know, Trump first, Russia second, and the rest of America third.”

-- Clinton Watts, fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Program on the Middle East as well as a Senior Fellow at the Center For Cyber and Homeland Security at The George Washington University, on CNN yesterday.