But Her Etc.
By
Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time that they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.
The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.
But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.
The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the Russian government outside of the intelligence services, the officials said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified.
A study in contrasts:
Left: tonight's breaking NYT headline
Right: NYT a week before the election pic.twitter.com/PIMfvk0Hqm— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) February 15, 2017
And lest we forget:
Trump’s election was a coup d’etat — remember, Comey didn’t merely bury the Russian connection while doing everything he could to keep EMAILS! alive, he actively implied that there was no Russian connection — and Dean Baquet was a primary accessory before and after the fact. It’s nice we’re finally getting some journalism now but…
And needless to say:
I think we should all take another few seconds and IMAGINE WHAT WOULD BE HAPPENING NOW IF CLINTON CAMPAIGN HAD CONSORTED WITH RUSSIANS.
— robneyer (@robneyer) February 15, 2017
Or if she didn’t release her tax returns. Or had settled a massive fraud suit based on her fraudulent “university.” Or…