Yuri Kobzar19:37, 12/15/23
The folder also included sources from where the CIA receives information about the Kremlin’s actions.
In the last days of the presidency of Donald Trump a folder with classified materials about Russia disappeared from the White House. It contained highly classified information related to Russian interference in the 2016 American elections, writes CNN, citing sources.
According to the channel, US intelligence officials fear that the leak could have revealed some of the most closely guarded secrets of the US and its allies. The folder contained, among other things, raw intelligence information about Russian agents and the sources of this information.
For example, the missing documents contained information about how US authorities realized that Vladimir Putin was trying to help Trump win the 2016 election.
The information was so secret that congressmen and their aides with security clearances could only view the files at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. At the same time, the notes that they made while studying these documents could not be taken with them; they were also kept in Langley, in a safe.
The folder was last seen at the White House during Trump’s final days as president. The former president ordered her to be taken there to declassify some of the documents related to the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the elections. Under the supervision of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the folder was scrutinized by Republican aides with security clearance.
The day before leaving the presidency, Trump issued an order to declassify most of the contents of the folder. The White House created several copies of a redacted version of the folder, which were intended to be distributed to congressional Republicans and right-wing journalists. Copies were sent to the recipients, but were quickly withdrawn after White House lawyers concluded that more serious redaction of the documents was needed.
As a result, the documents from this folder were never published, despite Trump’s declassification order. Censored copies were sent to the National Archives.
It is noted that the secret folder was not among the other secret documents that Trump stole to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, which became known last year.
Putin helped Trump in the 2016 election
In 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller completedinvestigation on Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign, proving the very fact that Moscow tried to influence elections. But investigators have found no evidence that Trump or his aides colluded with Russia to win the election.
At the same time, Trump aides tried to promote the idea that it was Ukraine that interfered in the 2016 Ukrainian elections, and not Russia at all.
(C)UNIAN 2023
Putin: It did not disappear, its lying on my desk……………………….
“…writes CNN, citing sources.”
No need to read any further. If they had sources they would name them. That’s what journalists do.
Nonsense. It’s common for sources to ask that their names be withheld. “No need to read further” – only if you want to keep your head in the sand and ignore details about trumpkov’s and his cronies’ crimes.
Here’s a (gifted) copy of the article about this from the NY Times. It includes a link to the full CNN article. Both articles contain numerous links to corroborating information, including court filings.
From a post about this by Professor Heather Cox Richardson:
[…] at a time when House Republicans have declined to fund Ukraine’s war against Russia’s 2022 invasion, the story serves as a reminder of the role Russia played in Trump’s 2016 election and how, during Trump’s time in office, he continued to cultivate a relationship with Russia’s authoritarian president Vladimir Putin and to turn his back on America’s traditional democratic allies, including those in NATO. (At one point, he told National Security Advisor John Bolton, “I don’t give a sh*t about NATO.”)
Indeed, Trump has suggested he would take the U.S. out of NATO if he returns to office, breaking the coalition that held first the Soviet Union and then Russia at bay since World War II. Such a betrayal would weaken all of the security alliances of the United States, according to Eastern European specialist Anne Applebaum, exposing the U.S. as an unreliable ally. As democracies ceased to work together, they would have to work with authoritarian governments, and after American political influence declined, so would the economic influence that has protected our economy. Authoritarian leaders like Putin would be the winners.
News about the missing binder also highlights just how hard Trump worked to convince his loyalists that that connection was a hoax. Although all U.S. intelligence services and the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee assessed that, in fact, Russia did intervene in the election to get Trump into the White House, many Trump loyalists continue to believe Trump’s lie that such interference did not happen.
Trump’s determination to convince his followers that “Russia, Russia, Russia” was a hoax was in part an attempt to get out from under the legal implications of working with a foreign country to win an election but also, perhaps more profoundly, an attempt to make his followers believe his lies over reality. If he could make them believe him, rather than the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community and the Senate, they would be his to command.
Russia, Russia, Russia was an important precursor to the Big Lie that Trump, rather than Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. The Big Lie has failed at every test of evidence, and yet Trump loyalists still say they believe it.