Trump saw evidence in 2017 Putin attacked U.S. elections

Donald Trump’s flip-flop routine around Russia’s information warfare campaign against the U.S. is based on a lie.

“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,” report David E. Sanger and Matthew Rosenberg at the New York Times.

According to this report, Donald Trump has known since January 6, 2017, exactly who ordered the attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

And we know from U.S. intelligence in 2018 that these attacks continue, now, as America prepares for a new round of midterm elections this November.

Excerpt from the NYT:

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 January meeting described in this bombshell NYT piece, out late tonight, sounds like a full court press by the intelligence community. The guest list? All our top spy and intel chiefs. This was as serious as it could be.

The Jan. 6, 2017, meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a prime example. He was briefed that day by John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command.

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was also there; after the formal briefing, he privately told Mr. Trump about the “Steele dossier.” That report, by a former British intelligence officer, included uncorroborated salacious stories of Mr. Trump’s activities during a visit to Moscow, which he denied.

According to nearly a dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin’s role in the election interference.

How many smoking guns does the Republican Party need? Get him out now. So we can get a president in who isn’t a Russian asset.