Everything You Need To Know About The Secret Report On Donald Trump And His Russian Connections
REMAIN EXTREMELY SKEPTICAL
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​On Tuesday night, a blizzard of stories regarding President-Elect Donald Trump's connections to Russia — and allegedly compromising materials about Trump possessed by Russian intelligence — blew across the internet. Here's a breakdown of what was released. 

What Was Reported

It started just after 6 pm ET, when CNN published an article reporting that intelligence officials briefed President-Elect Trump, President Obama and other high-ranking officials on a two-page synopsis of reports that Russian intelligence has compromising information on Trump and that the Trump campaign communicated with Russia during the campaign. [Update 1/11: NBC is reporting that, contrary to CNN, Trump did not receive the two-page synopsis of the dossier during his intelligence briefing.] Some of the key points from CNN's piece:  

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

[CNN]

As with any anonymous reports (and anonymous reports of allegations, at that), you should take the details in the report with a truckload of salt. What details, you ask? Shortly after CNN's article hit the internet, BuzzFeed published the documents behind the two-page synopsis. BuzzFeed News chief Ben Smith defended publishing the documents on the grounds that: 

Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of government.

[Ben Smith on Twitter]


The documents in question were reported on by Mother Jones a week before the election ('A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump'), although they did not publish the documents and it was not clear if US intelligence agencies were taking the report seriously at that point. Another reason to assess the reports with a great deal of skepticism — they're the result of paid oppo:

This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project's financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.)

[Mother Jones]

Elsewhere, The Guardian reported that the FBI was interested in contacts between Trump and Russia and applied for a warrant to monitor members of Trump's campaign:

The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (FISA) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The FISA court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.

[The Guardian]


What's In The Documents Published By BuzzFeed

The full documents include some… interesting allegations. And again, we should stress: the allegations in the documents are unverified, and should be read with extreme skepticism.

 One in particular — a claim that Russian intelligence has evidence of Trump hiring prostitutes to urinate on one — caught the eye of Twitter, prompting the hashtag #GoldenShowers to trend: 

 DocumentCloud

Allegations of multiple meetings between former Trump campaign member Carter Page and Russian officials (Page left the campaign after allegations of private meetings between him and Russian officials emerged in September):

 DocumentCloud

Elsewhere, the report claims that Trump's lawyer and surrogate Michael Cohen met with Russian representatives in Prague in August of last year:

 DocumentCloud

Two hours after BuzzFeed published the documents, Cohen tweeted a denial of the claim (which Trump retweeted): 

 

Trump's Response

In addition to retweeting Cohen's denial, Trump tweeted twice (so far) about the reports. His first comment was short and to the point:

 

Forty minutes later, he tweeted a link to a Lifezette article blasting Buzzfeed for publishing unverified documents: 

 

While the assertion in the Lifezette article is accurate — the details in the documents published by BuzzFeed are indeed unverified and BuzzFeed's decision to publish them can and should be questioned — Lifezette itself has a history of posting dubious or false news items with a conservative slant: 

One video produced by LifeZette this summer, ominously titled "Clinton Body Count," promoted a conspiracy theory that the Clinton family had some role in the plane crash death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., as well as the deaths of various friends and Democrats… Another LifeZette article, which went viral in the week prior to the election, falsely claimed that Wikileaks had revealed that a senior Hillary Clinton campaign official had engaged in occult rituals. Ingraham's site regularly receives links from the Drudge Report and other powerful drivers of Internet traffic.

[The Intercept]


[Update: 1/11] Trump returned to Twitter early Wednesday morning to deny the reports again, quoting from Russia's denial of the reports:

 

And to deny any entanglements with Russia (there's evidence of Trump doing business in Russia, but no evidence of entanglements): 

 

And to blast the intelligence community (which Trump has already clashed with):

 

 

 

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