While American citizens are currently mesmerized by the news that President Trump and his “orbit” of friends might have worked with Russians to subvert the forgone conclusion of a President Hillary, maybe we should add all the information we know about this narrative from our historically reliable liberal media.
Carl Bernstein, Jake Tapper, Evan Perez, and Jim Sciutto wrote this CNN News story about Trump and the Russians way back in January. This credible, liberal, news story starts out innocently and matter-of-factly enough.
“(CNN) Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.”
These “classified documents” were supposed to be information the Russians could use to blackmail President Trump. That was one of the first narratives anti-Trump activists were trying to sell to the American public through truth-compromised American news outlets. The fake news distributed by a cabal of anti-Trump American news outlets can easily be described as worse than any tangible evidence I have seen from so-called Russian sources.
Then CNN goes on in the next paragraph:
“The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.”
By my reading, Donald Trump was shown a two-page synopsis, not the entirety, of the allegations handed over by “a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible.”
Did Obama get to see the entirety of the “credible” memos provided by the “British intelligence operative?” Congress should ask the FBI because the FBI already knows.
How much of the synopsis was leaked? Who would have had this information to leak? Should the Congressional Committee investigating so-called Russian interference (no one has proven that yet) delve into this credible British intelligence memo? I would like to know where the person who provided the British intelligence memo to FBI Chief Comey got it.
It should not be hard to ask the original source of the British intelligence memo because it was Sen. John McCain who gave it to the FBI as part of his civic duty. He hangs around Washington and should not be hard to find. It could be that McCain was unwittingly handing over fake Russian-generated allegations to the FBI. Isn’t that what our whole Russian/Trump investigation is about? McCain probably has a good answer for that question. But we will never know unless we get him in for some friendly testimony before Congress. He thought it important then. I hope he believes it important now.
This briefing of Donald Trump was conducted by same familiar people, according to the CNN article:
“The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs — Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.”
I love this paragraph. I call it, “Your secret briefing is in the news.”
“One reason the nation’s intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.”
This briefing with the credible British intelligence memo looks more to me like James Clapper, James Comey, John Brennan, and Admiral Mike Rogers were trying to intimidate Donald Trump – with the help of documents provided by John McCain. You want a conspiracy theory based on how DC works – now you have one.
But Trump doesn’t blink.
The rest of the CNN news story about the Russian involvement in our presidential campaign spins the British intelligence memo as credible but does so through other news sources. The most tongue in cheek paragraph in this story about British intelligence is the last.
“One high-level administration official told CNN, “I have a sense the outgoing administration and intelligence community is setting down the pieces so this must be investigated seriously and run down. I think [the] concern was to be sure that whatever information was out there is put into the system so it is evaluated as it should be and acted upon as necessary.”
Oh, they intend to “run something down” all right – President Trump.
You have to laugh at the gall it takes to portray the Russians as working with Donald Trump by releasing a fake story bad enough he could be blackmailed with it. That only makes sense in Washington circles.
This is news – CNN-style. But Judge Napolitano was supposedly “fired” from Fox yesterday for suggesting British Intelligence was involved in the Trump/Russian story.
