In Tuesday’s White House press conference, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to answer a question she’s waived away with an "I’ll get back to you” at an earlier conference: Just when did Donald Trump learn that the emails of the DNC and John Podesta were hacked by agents working for the Russian government?
At the earlier conference, Sanders said she wasn’t sure when Donald Trump learned the source of the hacks—which is a very convenient bit of ignorance, considering Trump’s actions. On Tuesday, she answered that Trump didn’t know “until January” when he was briefed on the information.
Which is blatantly untrue—and also hugely important. Because the motivations of Donald Trump and his campaign are changed by the idea that he knew that the emails had been stolen, and knew it early.
The hacking of John Podesta’s email account took place on March 19. A month later, from George Papadopoulos’ statement of the offense:
On or about April 26, defendant Papadopoulous met the Professor for breakfast at a London hotel. During this meeting the Professor told the defendant that that he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he met with high level Russian government officials. The Professor told defendant Papadopoulos that he learned on that trump that the Russians had obtained “dirt” on then-candidate Clinton. The Professor told defendant Papadopoulous, as defendant Papadopoulous later described to the FBI, that “they [the Russians] have dirt on her”; “the Russians have emails of Clinton”; “they have thousands of emails.”
What’s very notably not in Papadopoulos’ statement: What he did with that information. However, it is clear that Papadopoulos was in touch with a “High-ranking Campaign Official” the very next day. That person has been identified from other sources as Paul Manafort. The details of what he said—and of what Papadopoulos knew about the source of those emails—is deliberately not disclosed in the statement.
It wasn’t until June 14 that the first publication informed the public of the leak and the possibility that Russians were involved. It took until October 7 before President Obama made the results on an intelligence review official. But the Trump campaign knew months earlier that the Russians had thousands of emails stolen from Democratic sources—thanks to their Russian connections.
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