CIA Knew Trump-Russia Claims Weren’t “Technically Plausible”

BUCK: Story up in the Washington Examiner by Jerry Dunleavy: “CIA Has Known Trump-Russia Collusion Data Not ‘Technically Plausible’ Since 2017, Durham Says — An agency believed to be the CIA concluded the data underpinning certain Trump-Russia collusion allegations was not ‘technically plausible’ by early 2017, casting further doubt on claims pushed by the Clinton campaign before the 2016 election.

“Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was indicted last September for allegedly concealing his clients — Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and ‘Tech Executive-1,’ known to be former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe — from FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016 when he pushed since-debunked claims of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. indictment alleged Sussmann lied when he said he was not providing the domain name system data allegations to the FBI on behalf of any client when he was…”

Clay, it’s frustrating, ’cause we found this information later on in the process when it’s much less likely to have the same degree of political impact than it would have had only we known about it earlier. This is disinformation, this wasn’t a mistake, and I think that’s what everyone… The whole Russia-Trump collusion thing — which is not over insofar as we still are waiting for the final report at least from Durham, who is doing a full-scale investigation of this.

This was the primary method through which the Democrats rallied their base and tried to slow and even destroy the Trump administration. They knew — the people pushing it early on knew — it was a lie. It’s not even that they believed their own BS, Clay. That’s what’s starting to emerge more and more. This was Russian-style dezinformatsiya, which means they knew it was crap and they were pushing it anyway because it could hurt their political rival.

CLAY: It’s also super frustrating — and this is me speaking as someone who was involved in a media company. The amount of dollars that they were talking about that Russia was spending to influence the 2016 election was minuscule. And anyone who is involved in a media company at all — CNN, New York Times, Washington Post — this is the essence of their business.

They would understand there — anyone who’s involved on the business side would — that the hundred grand in advertisements that Russia might have been trying to buy to influence the 2016 election, was not even enough to be considered a drop in the bucket and so the entire narrative that they tried to run with…

Buck, what’s frustrating to me is, I saw and knew what we spent on advertising on Facebook and what was spent by competitors and everybody else. And it’s so much money that the idea that they were selling that this could have ever been impactful was such a lie, and they knew it was a lie, anybody involved in those media companies did.