After some early confusion on timing, Trump is finally set to receive his "intelligence" briefing from the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey later this afternoon. The meeting comes just one day after the same three people briefed the Senate's Armed Services Committee on their "Russian Hacking" discoveries, which actually turned out to be nothing more than a repeat of the numerous allegations leaked to the mainstream media by "anonymous sources" over the past three weeks.
Of course, the meeting took a bizarre twist earlier this week when Trump suggested via Twitter that it had been pushed back to allow more time "to build a case."
The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017
Of course, the entire "Russian hacking" narrative has drawn very serious questions from the start leading many to question whether the intelligence community was on a crusade for the truth or to simply delegitimize President-elect Trump. One question that has been raised repeatedly is why the Obama administration and intelligence community waited until after the election to assert their very procative claims. Meanwhile, new details have emerged in recent days that, after allegedly being attacked by vicious "Russian hackers," the DNC refused to cooperate with the FBI. Per NBC:
A senior law enforcement official said the FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the importance of obtaining direct access to the servers "only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated." The official said the FBI had to rely on a "third party" for information, but did get access to the material it needed.
The Washington Post, citing anonymous U.S. officials, reported Thursday that intelligence agencies have identified parties who delivered stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. The officials also said there were disparities between efforts to infiltrate Democratic and Republican networks, and said the U.S. intercepted communications in which Russian officials celebrated Trump's victory. It was not clear which of those details were included in the classified report.
Which prompted Trump to ask the very obvious question of why the DNC would refuse help if they were so certain about Russian hacking from the start?
The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia......
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017
So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017
Then there is, of course, the other issue that the "Russian hacking" narrative seems to continue to evolve over time. At first, Russia was deemed to be the source of Wikileaks' leaked emails from the DNC and John Podesta. But after Julian Assange appeared on Fox News earlier this week to assert, once more, that his source was neither the Russian government nor "any state actor", even this seemingly basic detail of the narrative had to be modified by the "intelligence community." As we pointed out yesterday, the new narrative morphed to suggest that while "Russian hackers" stole the data from DNC servers, it was provided to Wikileaks through a "third party." So basically, Russia stole DNC emails then provided those stolen emails to a DNC insider who then provided them to Wikileaks...that seems reasonable.
"@FoxNews: Julian Assange on U.S. media coverage: “It’s very dishonest.” #Hannity pic.twitter.com/ADcPRQifH9" More dishonest than anyone knows
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017
The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange - wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017
And finally there is, of course, the continued collusion between the Obama administration, the "intelligence community" and the mainstream media, which has been crucial in spreading the "Russian hacking" narrative via "anonymous officials" ever since Hillary's defeat. The latest evidence of collusion came just yesterday when the Washington Post, CNN and NBC all were seemingly given a sneak peak of the 50 page intelligence report even before President-elect Trump was briefed on it's findings.
Which obviously drew even more questions from Trump.
How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017
Despite the many controversies surrounding the investigation, Trump's top aides have assured the concerned mainstream media he will maintain an open mind during his briefing this afternoon while confirming that he has "a healthy skepticism of everything." We look forward to the live Twitter updates from the President-elect throughout the briefing.