Thread by @michaeldweiss

[Thread.] OK, let's go through Ratcliffe's letter and what it tells us about what Russian intelligence knew and when it knew it. Here's the letter:

In "late July," it states, Russian intelligence assessed that Clinton "had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal" against Trump "by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking" of the DNC.

In May 2016, the DNC and DCCC realized their systems were compromised.
washingtonpost.com/news/politics/…

The following month, WaPo breaks the story that Russian government hackers have compromised them. washingtonpost.com/world/national…

Between June and July, the GRU, Russian military intelligence, create its cut-out Guccifer 2.0 and coordinates with WikiLeaks to leak the hacked correspondence.

In late July, Trump invites Russia to "find the 30,000 emails that are missing" from Clinton's server.

At the same time, Steele is filing his first (later publicized) memos to Fusion GPS. The one in June is about Trump's aleged compromised ties to Russia (including the Ritz salacity); the one in July is about Russian cyber-ops.

What else happened in July?

The Australians pass on what George Papadopoulos told the High Commissioner, courtesy of Joseph Mifsud, about the Russians having Clinton's emails.

So this leaves a very intense period, from May to late July, in which the Russian intelligence services are both laying the infrastructure for their interference campaign and undoubtedly hoovering up useful intel about what the U.S. knows and how it knows it.

We have the open source info via WaPo's scoop, the possibility that Aussie intel-sharing with the Americans was intercepted, and (yes) the potential for any of Steele's sources/sub-sources feeding what he was compiling (or feeding what they were giving him) back to Moscow.

It's not hard to turn a raw intel product, a la Steele, into confirmation that its probable contractor (Clinton's campaign) was going to tie Trump to the Russia hack. It's also not hard to simply fabricate this yarn as a way to confuse the Americans.

It's a way to hedge your bets, too. If the denial that you hacked doesn't work (and it won't), you feed the allegation that the candidate you hate (Clinton) is trying to link you, the hacker, to her opponent, knowing this'll be run up the IC flagpole.

And at a time when the IC is struggling to comprehend the extent and scope of the breach.

The cleverness of this play is that even in being caught you manage to taint the victim by suggesting she's being conspiratorially about whodunnit -- another way of deflecting or diluting your culpability.