James B. Comey, James R. Clapper Jr. and John O. Brennan at a Senate hearing on Russia’s election interference in January 2017.CreditAl Drago/The New York Times
New York Times: From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered
WASHINGTON — Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.
The shifting narrative underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear than this week.
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WNU Editor: I can understand why President Trump would be skeptical. All of this occurred during President Obama's watch, and the men who were telling him about this Russian operation were the same men that President Trump believed were targeting him during the campaign (and we now know that they were "spying" on his campaign). And as for that January briefing and the intel community's collective opinion that Russia interfered in the U.S. election .... an opinion that was written by James Clapper and his closest aides (apparently based on a highly-secretive anonymous source in the Kremlin and other "evidence" that we will never see) ... and is the reason why the above New York Times post was published yesterday. If I was President Trump and knowing who I was talking to .... I would be raising my eyebrows and wondering what is their hidden agenda, and not on the report that they were presenting. 18 months later we now know where Clapper, Comey, and Brennan stand vis-a-vis President Trump, and it is obvious to me that President Trump is treating all of their work product when they were working under the Obama administration as suspect, even though many in the media have chosen not to.
