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.
“Information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Putin”
God, I hope Trump wasn’t told the name of that source, because I’m not entirely sure he would keep that from Putin. I’m totally serious.
A good question is the timing of this story. Clearly, it came from the intelligence community itself. They are declaring all out war on Trump, seeking to embarrass him through leaks like this.
Trump sorta kinda denied the story, if you want to read that into these tweets
By the way, TEN tweets this morning, which has got to be close to a record. He’s really unhinged. And about half of them had to do with Russian meddling, where he insists that he ALWAYS was saying it was Russia meddling (and blaming FAKE NEWS).
It is scary how many people fall for this. It’s just as scary how many Republicans in Congress privately admit they know the president is full of shit, but they are afraid to stand up to him.