You have to be deranged to believe that Vladimir Putin seeks to promote the reelection of President Trump. It is the kind of derangement that seems to permeate the upper reaches of our intelligence establishment. John Hinderaker expresses our unclassified view in “You don’t need a spy to know which way the Russian wind blows” (classic allusion in John’s heading).
This morning Chris Wallace is peddling the line pushed by Adam Schiff et al. based on a recent (classified) briefing given to the House Intelligence Committee. CNN’s Jake Tapper [!] posted a useful thread on Twitter pushing back against the gist of the briefing as reported by Adam Goldman et al. in the Schiff Times last week. According to Tapper’s source, the briefer may have mischaracterized the intelligence at the briefing. Click here or on the time stamp in the tweet below to access Tapper’s thread.
NOTE: See also Eli Lake’s Bloomberg News column “Trump’s Latest ‘Russia Scandal’ Is Less Than It Appears.”
A national security official I know and trust pushes back on the way the briefing/ODNI story is being told, and others with firsthand knowledge agree with his assessment.
Thread/
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 21, 2020
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