Thread by @ChrisMegerian

This is a very strange document that appears designed to provide talking points to President Trump and his allies judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

Let's run down what we're reading here. It's a letter from the national intelligence director to Sen. Graham declassifying some information involving the Russia investigation, mainly that Hillary Clinton was looking for a way to tie Donald Trump to Russia's hacking

This is based on "insight into Russian intelligence analysis," but the letter acknowledges that the U.S. "does not know the accuracy of this allegation" or whether it reflects "exaggeration or fabrication."

Remember when Trump allies complained about the "unverified" dossier?

The allegation is that Clinton wanted to distract from her private email server by focusing attention on Russian interference and tying that to Trump.

Well, Russian interference was a scandal, and yeah, Trump was capitalizing on it to win the election.

As far as the timing — the letter says this plan to "vilify" Trump came in late July.

What was happening then? Trump was publicly asking Russia to hack Clinton's emails!

This letter does include any actual intelligence reports, just snippets of information that the intelligence community can't even vouch for as reliable. And now the Trump administration and Sen. Graham are making this public?

One noteworthy part — the letter says "disclosure of this information will not interfere with ongoing Department of Justice investigations."

That means John Durham isn't looking to bring charges related to the information here.

The point is, we should expect the Trump administration and Republicans to release snippets of information if it becomes increasingly clear that Durham isn't going to provide them with the indictments they want.

Here's a reaction from the spokesperson for the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee

Here's an example of how this letter is reverberating in conservative media — skipping how U.S. intelligence "does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication."

Conservative media — it's bad to share unverified information collected from Russian sources to damage Donald Trump

Also conservative media — look at this unverified information collected from Russian sources to damage Hillary Clinton!

The idea that Clinton had some kind of secret plan to tie Trump to Russia doesn't hold water. She was very public about connecting the two!

Clinton didn't have to invent a scandal. Russia was hacking emails and spreading disinformation, and Trump was harnessing that illegal operation for his own benefit.

The special counsel decided it didn't constitute a criminal conspiracy. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

This isn't what the letter says, and the letter says the underlying Russian intelligence could be fabricated.