An intelligence report prepared for President Obama includes intercepts of Russian officials cheering Donald Trump's win.
Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.
The 50-page report hit President Obama’s desk on Thursday, and should be handed to Donald Trump at his briefing on Friday (if he gets back from his important errand in time). A declassified version will be made available to the public.
From the early reviews, the report is much more definitive than previous versions, not just in accusing Russia of working for a Trump victory, but in placing the blame on a particular desk.
U.S. officials who have reviewed the new report said it goes far beyond the brief public statement that Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued in October, accusing Russia of having “directed” cyber operations to disrupt the U.S. election, and concluding, in a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
Trump will have to go on Twitter overtime to counter the contents of the report—as soon as he checks in with Putin and Assange. But at least he won’t have to check with adviser, James Woolsey, since the former CIA director quit the Trump team.
Woolsey was apparently concerned over Trump’s plans to gut the intelligence community
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey Jr., a veteran of four presidential administrations, resigned Thursday from Trump’s transition team because of growing tensions over Trump’s vision for intelligence agencies.
Woolsey’s resignation as a Trump senior adviser comes amid frustrations over the incoming administration’s national security plans and Trump’s public comments undermining the intelligence community.The report echoes Thursday’s congressional testimony which indicated Russia had exploited every possible means of swaying the US vote.
Or he may have been upset by Michael Flynn’s proposal that
Washington must "combine the United States' national security strategy along with Russia's."
In any case, there’s little sign that Woolsey was having any kind of cooling influence on Trump’s anti-intelligence jihad. Pro Tip: When your boss pays more attention to Alex Jones and Roger Stone than he does to you, it’s time to leave.
Meanwhile, back at Congress, the agency Trump wants to discard was revealing just how much Moscow took advantage of every weakness in our system.
The country’s top intelligence official testified to Congress on Thursday that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign went well beyond hacking to include disinformation and the dissemination of “fake news” — an effort, he said, that continues.
“Whatever crack, fissure, they could find in our tapestry . . . they would exploit it,” said Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on foreign cybersecurity threats, especially Russian hacking and interference in the election.
Republicans spent the hearing tiptoeing a fine line between not disparaging the intelligence community and not saying anything that would draw the ire of the Tweeter in Chief—a position that left their questions both weak and vague. But Democrats showed no such timidity.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Thursday took a swipe at Trump. “Who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence community?” she said, adding, “Who actually is the benefactor?”
Clapper replied that “there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers, to include policymaker number one, should always have for intelligence, but I think there is a difference between skepticism and disparagement.’’