As usual, republican based investigations are expected to have regular leaks that serve political purposes.
Worse than the investigators leaking would be those complicit with fabricating a fake scandal, the magnitude of which strikes at our solemn electoral process for the highest office in the land... the most powerful office in the world...
James Clapper may have misled Congress regarding his contacts with the media during his tenure as the director of national intelligence, according to a report on Russian election meddling released by congressional Republicans Friday.
Clapper initially told the House Intelligence Committee, which produced the report, that he had no contact with the media regarding the infamous Steele dossier during his time serving in the Obama administration.
“Clapper flatly denied ‘discussing the dossier [compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists,’” the report states.
Clapper
later admitted that he had discussed the dossier with CNN’s Jake Tapper after lawmakers confronted him about that specific disclosure, and “admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic,” according to the report. But he maintained that the discussion did not constitute a leak because a number of media outlets, including CNN, were already in possession of the dossier when he spoke with Tapper.
“Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in early January 2017,” the report continues, “around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump, on ‘the Christopher Steele information,’ a two-page summary of which was ‘enclosed in’ the highly-classified version of the ICA,” the intelligence community assessment that Russia had in fact meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
Then-president elect Trump was briefed on the salacious and unverified contents of the Steele dossier, which was paid for by Hilary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, on January 6, 2017. Four days later, CNN used news of the briefing — leaked by two unnamed “national security officials” — to reveal the existence of the dossier.
CNN had the dossier in its possession but was waiting on a “news hook” to reveal its existence, according to one of the memos former FBI director James Comes wrote detailing his conversations with Trump.
Buzzfeed published the entire dossier immediately after CNN reported that Trump had been briefed on its contents.