Buzzfeed Publishes Alleged Synopsis of Claims Made About Trump

This is apparently the latest media attempt at a #NeverTrump Hail Mary.

I wrote about this in the last post, but it seems I buried the lead, as CNN is giving this hair-on-fire coverage and Al Franken just asked Sessions about it.

Here's the basics:

Intelligence officials have presented Trump with evidence (they say) that the Russians have made efforts to dig into Trump's personal and financial information, presumably to compromise him/extort him.

These senior intelligence officials also included the synopsis to demonstrate that Russia had compiled information potentially harmful to both political parties, but only released information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. This synopsis was not an official part of the report from the intelligence community case about Russian hacks, but some officials said it augmented the evidence that Moscow intended to harm Clinton's candidacy and help Trump's, several officials with knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

Apparently this information was fed to the CIA and FBI by... #NeverTrumper oppo researchers.

Now Buzzfeed is publishing this document, which has been circulating in the background in media organizations for months (Mother Jones reported breathlessly about it last October).

Buzzfeed admits nothing in the document can be verified, and furthermore, the document contains clear mistakes about the things which can be fact-checked.

So this is the Thing the media is going to be shrieking about for the week.

posted by Ace at 06:33 PM

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