Is the Intel Community planning to meddle in 2020 election?
Recently the Intelligence Community made clear it will be a player in the 2020 presidential election. No one should be surprised.
On February 13, the House Intelligence Committee held a meeting at which intel officials briefed lawmakers on foreign efforts to influence U.S. elections. By several accounts, the officials told the committee that Russia is working to re-elect President Trump.
A number of Republican committee members were deeply skeptical. What the officials said was classified, so they cannot discuss it publicly, but in conversations later, GOP lawmakers made it clear that the intel officials did not have the evidence to support their assertion.
No one was surprised when, a week later, the New York Times published a story headlined "Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump." The news quickly became another one of those bombshell reports that consume hours of talk on cable TV.
The problem was, intel officials did not have the evidence to make that assertion. And almost as soon as the story broke, officials with knowledge of the meeting suggested that the headlines were wrong. On Sunday, CNN reported that Pierson had apparently "overstated" the Putin-wants-Trump story.
And then there were the circumstances of the briefing. The Intelligence Community works for the president. Yet officials chose to brief Chairman Schiff's House Intelligence Committee on this extraordinarily consequential finding before telling the president.
Whatever the motive, spilling the beans in a room with dozens of people present – intel officials brought a lot of staff with them – increased the chances of precisely the type of leak that occurred.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/is-the-intel-community-planning-to-meddle-in-2020-election