Moscow, Russia

This Is Not The “Deep State”. This Is Not “Hysterical Democrats”. This Is Not “Fake News”.

This is the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee issuing a report (conveniently for Trump the day before Independence Day, when it won’t get as much coverage as it normally would; inconveniently shortly before Trump’s due to meet with Putin), unequivocally supporting intelligence reports that Russia:

Eric J Scholl
2 min readJul 4, 2018

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  1. Interfered in the 2016 Presidential Election.
  2. Did so with a clear intent to favor Trump.

Both things Trump denies. Both things which could account for a whole bunch of really wide-ranging and ludicrous Tweets from the President— even by his standards.

While the findings themselves are not new, the fact that the entire Committee: 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats speak in support is highly significant. The Committee also said since they’d started looking into it, further details have come out to “bolster the assessment”.

Specifically that:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

And that “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference” for Trump.

Meanwhile, CNN reports that when Trump sits with Putin next week, at least part of the meeting will be strictly one-on-one without any aides present. This is highly unusual: even in the most intimate of conversations the Secretary of State or National Security Adviser, or Ambassador is normally present. Why? Because it’s important to have a witness. For both sides. Any good negotiator knows that.

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Eric J Scholl

Peabody award winning journalist. Streaming media pioneer. Played @ CBGB back in the day. Editor-In-Chief "The Chaos Report" www.thechaosreport.com