In a secretly taped video CNN’s Van Jones referred to the Trump-Russia story as a “big nothingburger.” Interesting that one of the network’s senior news commentators would say that, although not publicly, but privately to someone in an elevator. The cable network’s news director has apparently urged anchors to refer to the story of Russian interference in the U.S. election as something confirmed by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies (which is, in fact, not quite true). Hence it must be supported by any reasonable person as settled fact. When Trump supporters (or others) point out that the same agencies asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda ties in 2003, they are told that many improvements have been made in intelligence collection since then. But intelligence is always susceptible to high-level manipulation.
Dick Cheney and his neocons obliged the intellect community to accept, or at least reference in official reports, what turned out to be sheer disinformation (in order to get their war). I believe Obama wanted a joint report alleging Russian intervention in the presidential election on Trump’s behalf, both to draw doubt upon Trump’s legitimacy (as Trump had sought to do to him), and to further vilify Putin.
But the January 9 report summarizing the evidence for interference amounts to a argument that “the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and Wikileaks to release U.S. victim [Hillary] data,” which has…