On November 7, The Intercept reported that, at President Donald Trump’s urging, “CIA Director Mike Pompeo met late last month with a former U.S. intelligence official,” William Binney, who pushed a conspiracy theory that “the theft of the Democratic National Committee’s [(DNC)] emails during the 2016 presidential campaign was an inside job, rather than a hack by Russian intelligence.”

Binney has previously pushed his claim during his appearances on pro-Trump media, including on Infowars, Sean Hannity’s Fox News and radio shows, and Fox’s Tucker Carlson Tonight. On the March 8 edition of Fox’s Hannity, Binney said he agreed with a story from WikiLeaks that the “CIA uses stolen malware to attribute cyber-attacks to nations like Russia.” And when Hannity asked Binney about the likelihood that Russia hacked the DNC on the August 25 edition of his radio program, Binney replied, “I figure it’s probably one chance in 100 that is was them.” And on the August 14 edition of Fox’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, Binney said that he “started opposing” the idea that Russia hacked the DNC originally “simply because of the way the intelligence community was talking” and that “it appears that many people are emotionally tied to this agenda to tie the Russians with President Trump.”

From the November 7 article in The Intercept: