Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

My guess: Someone in Trump camp told Russians to dump data to WikiLeaks

I think this Russia story is never going to go away.

Screen Shot 2017-03-24 at 10.12.30 AM
Screen Shot 2017-03-24 at 10.12.30 AM

Reading the headlines over the last couple of days, it seems to me that part of what is going on isn’t that the Trump camp communicated directly with WikiLeaks (though some may have), but rather than at some point last year, Russia's Federal Security Service representatives had a bunch of e-mails and other stuff that they didn’t know what to do with, and someone in the Trump camp advised them to take it, directly or indirectly, to WikiLeaks.

Reading the headlines over the last couple of days, it seems to me that part of what is going on isn’t that the Trump camp communicated directly with WikiLeaks (though some may have), but rather than at some point last year, Russia’s Federal Security Service representatives had a bunch of e-mails and other stuff that they didn’t know what to do with, and someone in the Trump camp advised them to take it, directly or indirectly, to WikiLeaks.

Further, there may have been discussions on timing. Someone has the pussy-grabbing tape? OK, release the XYZ e-mail.

WikiLeaks responded to a CNN story by tweeting, “WikiLeaks & Assange have repeatedly confirmed that they have never communicated with Stone.” That may be an artful way of avoiding the point. Not saying they did.

I think this Russia story is never going to go away. And because the Trumpistas are in extreme denial, it will continue to drip out. I would not be surprised by criminal charges down the road — perjury at first, perhaps tax fraud later.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons 

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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