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The Sunday denial: “Nobody briefed or told me.”
The Monday denial, retweeted: “Random wads of cash in Afghan hut.”
The Tuesday press conference “warnings,” from Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany:
As the National Security Council noted just yesterday, “To those government officials who betray the trust of the people of the United States by leaking classified information, your actions endanger our national security.”
The ODNI said, “The selective leaking of any classified information disrupts the vital interagency work to collect, assess, and mitigate threats, and places our forces at risk. It is also, simply put, a crime.”
[...] MS. MCENANY: The President does read, and he also consumes intelligence.
The denials today: “No corroborating evidence.” … “Fake News Media Hoax.”
Trump Dismisses Russian Bounty Intelligence Reports as ‘Hoax’
Justin Sink and Jennifer Jacobs, Bloomberg; msn.com — July 1, 2020
[...]
“This was something that never got presented to me -- and they know that -- never got presented because it didn’t rise to that level,” Trump said Wednesday in an interview with Fox Business Network. “From what I hear, and I hear it pretty good, the intelligence people, many of them, didn’t believe it happened at all. I think it’s a hoax. I think it’s a hoax by the newspapers and the Democrats.”
Riiight! It was so much “in question” that the intelligence people — DIDN’T distribute it internally:
Suspicions of Russian Bounties Were Bolstered by Data on Financial Transfers
Charlie Savage, Mujib Mashal, Rukmini Callimachi, Eric Schmitt and Adam Goldman, NY Times
; msn.com — June 30, 2020
[...]
Intelligence about the suspected Russian plot was included in Mr. Trump’s written President’s Daily Brief in late February, according to two officials, contrasting Mr. Trump’s claim on Sunday that he was never “briefed or told” about the matter.
The information was also considered solid enough to be distributed to the broader intelligence community in a May 4 article in the C.I.A.’s World Intelligence Review, commonly called The Wire, according to several officials.
U.S. Intelligence was SOOO in doubt about what they had discovered — they DIDN’T distribute it to our Intel allies overseas:
Britain Confirms Seeing US Intelligence On Russian Bounty Plan
www.ndtv.com — June 30, 2020
London:
Britain's Defence Secretary Ben Wallace on Tuesday confirmed having seen US intelligence briefings about alleged Russian bounties offered to Afghan terrorists to kill American troops.
"I am aware of the intelligence," Wallace told a parliamentary defence sub-committee hearing when asked specifically about the alleged Russian bounties.
[...]
U.S. Officials were SOOO confused about “Random wads of cash in Afghan hut” — that they TOTAL forgot how to apply “financial forensics” to link Transfer A to B to C ...
U.S. officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, which was among the evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.
[...]
Afghan officials this week described a sequence of events that dovetails with the account of the intelligence. They said that several businessmen who transfer money through the informal “hawala” system were arrested in Afghanistan over the past six months and are suspected of being part of a ring of middlemen who operated between the Russian intelligence agency, known as the GRU, and Taliban-linked militants. The businessmen were arrested in what the officials described as sweeping raids in the north of Afghanistan, as well as in Kabul.
www.baltimoresun.com reporting on NY Times — June 30, 2020
PS. That is what is known as “evidence” in any human network — NOT yet poisoned by Trump-speak. The "News Media" didn't "make up" this story, like the Denier-in-Chief claims. The News Media only reported on it — what Intelligence Agencies have ALREADY figured out, from the evidence.
All these shifting and non-credible excuses from the Trump-o-matic Administration Noise-Machine amount to one gigantic obscuring fog of nonsense.
Nonsense that, in prior times, would have been called, a giant smokescreen …
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Nonsense, in the surreal times of today, that just gets chalked up as, just another day of Trump-Chaos.
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And the GOP wants to give us 4 MORE YEARS of this exact same BS. (aka Trump Excuses.)