The Washington Post has been joined on the RussiaGate story by NPR, whose reporting staff have spoken with their own sources and received confirmation of the story that WaPo’s people received:
The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election specifically to help Donald Trump win the presidency, a U.S. official has confirmed to NPR.
"Before, there was confidence about the fact that Russia interfered," the official says. "But there was low confidence on what the direction and intentionality of the interference was. Now they [the CIA] have come to the conclusion that Russia was trying to tip the election to Trump."
The official adds: "The reason the assessment changed is that new information became available" since Oct. 7, when the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement accusing Russia of interfering with the American election process.
The Washington Post first reported the CIA's new assessment on Friday.
The story goes on to mention details similar to those covered in the WaPo story, including that Russian operatives hacked the Republican National Committee’s servers, but didn’t publicly release what they had found.
Electoral College, are you paying attention?