The Trump regime loyalists are now openly calling the intelligence community liars, with National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien echoing Acting DNI Richard Grenell in saying there is "no intelligence" to indicate Russian interference in the 2020 elections on behalf of Donald Trump.
Last week, intelligence officials warned lawmakers in a briefing before the House Intelligence Committee that the Russians are continuing their efforts to interfere in the 2020 election, and that one prong is aimed at helping re-elect President Trump. But the president's top national security official said there's "no intelligence behind" such claims.
Speaking to "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien disputed the reports of what was presented during a House Intelligence Committee briefing that he said was "leaked" to members of the press. O'Brien said he had "not seen the finding" himself.
"From what I understand about the report....I get this second hand, but from Republican congressmen that were in the committee, there was no intelligence behind it," O'Brien said. "I haven't seen any intelligence to support the reports that were leaked out of the House. But it's just hard to comment on that because, again, I wasn't there. And these are leaks that were coming from a House Intel Committee hearing. I haven't seen any intelligence that would- would back up what I'm reading in the papers."
Following the congressional briefing, intelligence officials then briefed the White House on election security and offered the same assessment — that Russia is trying to help Mr. Trump win re-election in 2020 — a senior administration official told CBS.
Moscow has since denied that it's trying to interfere in the election and help Mr. Trump, and said the reports are the result of paranoia, according to the Reuters news service.
Mr. Trump was also dismissive, tweeting Friday, "Another misinformation campaign is being launched by Democrats in Congress saying that Russia prefers me to any of the Do Nothing Democrat candidates who still have been unable to, after two weeks, count their votes in Iowa."
Sources tell CBS News that Mr. Trump was unaware of the classified House briefing and was furious when he found out about it from House Republicans.
Now, this seems like a huge hedge, and Grenell is actually saying the same thing: neither of them have seen intelligence, neither of them attended the briefings. It doesn't mean the intel doesn't exist, but let's face fact, it absolutely does.
For all his faults, former DNI Dan Coats never said the intelligence that Russia was interfering on behalf of Trump in 2016 didn't exist, it 100% did and we've known about the internet farm in St. Petersburg that did exactly that, along with the social media manipulation, and the repeated hacks into state voter registration servers, plus the DNC email hack laundered through WikiLeaks.
Grenell and O'Brien aren't going quite that far, yet. But Trump is too busy ordering mass purges of the intel community anyhow for the distinction to matter too much. I fully expect whoever did brief House Democrats and Bernie Sanders on Russian interference will find themselves manning a desk somewhere in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands before the end of the year.
The point of these denials is precisely that, to set up plausible deniability. They're "not aware of" intelligence so when the inevitable leaks happen they can say they weren't aware of it, and it will justify purges going forward in order to "stop future leaks".
The ultimate goal is to discredit the Mueller probe and to smokescreen the Trump regime getting help from Russia in 2020, and the seed that the people who absolutely have seen the intelligence haven't "seen" it is now planted.
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