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Worth reading the full extract of James Clapper& #39;s newly release House testimony. Here are the relevant bits, with my comments to follow:
Continued from above:
So Clapper& #39;s statement tracks with the findings of the Mueller report, which went one further and rubbished the very concept of "collusion" as not even being a legal term of art. However...
You& #39;ve got a bit of the testimony redacted here, pertaining to anecdotal evidence about Trump campaign officials meeting with Russians (the context of this exchange makes clear they weren& #39;t private citizens but emissaries of the Russian government).
Clapper notes that his counterintelligence Spidey sense tingled owing to the frequency of those meetings, although -- and here is a significant admission -- he was in the dark as to what, exactly, was discussed at those meetings.
Moreover, Clapper all but accuses Michael Flynn and the Trump campaign of acting as a shadow government in its dealings with Kislyak re: sanctions -- something I don& #39;t think those crowing about both this testimony and DoJ& #39;s motion to dismiss today care to acknowledge.
And note, too, his debunking of another conspiracy theory of the Trumpkin Right -- that the Steele dossier is to blame for U.S. intelligence& #39;s conclusions about Russia& #39;s interference operation.
This is a common theme, I& #39;m finding, with those who spend most of their day lambasting the press for fucking everything up but then rely on cursory or superficial press write-ups of complicated events or documents: it& #39;s all about the gotcha, not the substance.
Here is the full transcript of Clapper& #39;s testimony. Read it for yourself: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/jc7.pdf">https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedf...
