Daily Kos: Intelligence hearing designed to show that Russia hadn't helped Trump ... showed something
Moscow Mitch
In February, Shelby Pierson, an intelligence specialist assigned to investigate threats to the U.S. election system, warned Congress that Russia wanted to see Donald Trump reelected and was planning to interfere in the 2020 election because Russian President Vladimir Putin finds that Trump is “more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests.” Republicans hurried to warn Trump about the briefing. He was so upset that he called acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire into the White House for a screaming session, and then replaced him with the worst possible person in the form of professional internet troll Richard Grenell.
That chair-shuffling appears to have generated just the response that Trump wanted. On Tuesday a senior intelligence officer appeared on Capitol Hill to explain, in a careful back-and-forth with Republican leaders, that Russia has done nothing to help Donald Trump. But notably absent from the hearing of intelligence leaders was Trump’s new acting DNI.
The entire hearing—held in the Trump-friendly confines of the Senate, with Republican leader Mitch McConnell helming the affair—was designed from the outset as a counter to the earlier briefing that Pierson gave to the House Intelligence Committee. As The Washington Post reports, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William Evanina, “tempered” the early statements from Pierson. He did so in an exchange with McConnell that was so clearly designed to generate a nothing-to-see-here response that a second official present said, “Both question and response were clearly pre-drafted.”
The call-and-response between McConnell and Evanina generated just the statement that Republicans wanted to carry out of the hearing: Russia has done nothing to help Trump. And all of them seemed prepared to ignore the other half of the message that came from the same hearing: Trump has done nothing to keep Russia out.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/11/1926441/-Intelligence-hearing-designed-to-show-that-Russia-hadn-t-helped-Trump-showed-something-else?detail=emaildkre
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