Last Thursday, The New York Times reported that the House Intelligence Committee, led by professional leaker Rep. Adam Schiff of California, had been briefed that Russia was interfering on behalf of Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

This set off all of the usual klaxons about the Kremlin for about the 287th time during Trump’s presidency — almost all of which have turned out to be false. But no, this time it was pretty unequivocal: Moscow preferred Trump to stay in the White House because they knew they could deal with him.

The next day it was reported that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, had been briefed about Russian interference on his behalf, too. The plot didn’t just thicken; it congealed.

The Times’ reporting began to shift gears a bit on Sunday. The accounts coming out of the House Intelligence Committee became “muddied.” There was some talk that the intelligence official who gave the briefing, Shelby Pierson, may have left out some “subtle nuance” regarding the intelligence community’s conclusions regarding Russia’s interference.

Throughout the week, reports from intelligence officials made it clear that the original Times report wasn’t accurate. While various articles may have diverged in terms of how wrong the original report was, one thing was indisputable: The Times’ first report was essentially weaponized leaking by Democrats.

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Take CNN’s Sunday report, in which intelligence officials said Pierson, the intelligence community’s top election security official, “appears to have overstated” the case for Russian interference on Trump’s behalf.

“The intelligence doesn’t say that,” one official said.

“A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it’s a step short of that. It’s more that they understand the President is someone they can work with, he’s a dealmaker.”

The blame, according to the CNN article, lay with Pierson: “One intelligence official said that Pierson’s characterization of the intelligence was ‘misleading’ and a national security official said Pierson failed to provide the ‘nuance’ needed to accurately convey the US intelligence conclusions.”

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A report from NBC News, meanwhile, seemed to indicate Pierson provided more than enough nuance.

“Last week, a bombshell report in The New York Times said Pierson and other briefers in the meeting had told lawmakers ‘that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected,'” NBC reported Wednesday.

“Intelligence officials say that was an overstatement, fueled, they believe, by a misinterpretation by some Democratic lawmakers on the committee.

“Two intelligence officials told NBC News this week that Pierson did not tell lawmakers that intelligence showed Russia was actively working to help the president’s re-election campaign.”

While intelligence officials said that Russians would prefer Donald Trump, what the intelligence doesn’t demonstrate “is that the Russians are actively taking steps to help Trump now. That was also true in the 2016 election, public intelligence reports say — the Russians at first sought to sow chaos, then moved to actively supporting Trump.”

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Texas GOP Rep. John Ratcliffe said the leaks are specifically designed to hurt the president.

When asked to comment about the briefing during an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Ratcliffe pointed out the information disclosed there was supposed to be “confidential.”

“It’s funny that we’re having a discussion about what is still a classified briefing, information behind closed doors, and you’re asking me about a report in The New York Times about what specifically was said,” Ratcliffe said.

“I can’t tell you how many reporters have asked me to go into detail about it. It’s still classified.”

“It would be a crime for me to give the specifics to this crowd right now, and yet everyone knows most of the details as you have now correctly laid them out,” Ratcliffe added. “Unfortunately, you just gave the most recent instance. This has happened for the last three years.”

One example, Ratcliffe said, were “real-time” leaks during Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony before Congress.

“You have folks that have access to classified information that are not treating it with the respect that it deserves,” Ratcliffe said.

“So folks are real clear — when something gets classified at the top-secret level, it’s information that provides a grave national security risk if it’s out to the public, but it’s not being treated that way. And we have seen that, unfortunately, consistently since Donald Trump has been president of the United States.”

What to make of the reports, then? The general consensus seems to be the original conclusion that was pushed by The Times and their sources on the House Intelligence Committee — that the Russians were interfering on behalf of Trump — are completely false.

The word “nuance” gets thrown around a lot in these reports — the nuance being that while the Kremlin might prefer the current administration and is interfering in our elections, those two facts are mutually exclusive. Much like 2016, what they want could simply be chaos.

Pierson, meanwhile, either overstated the case for Russian interference on Trump’s behalf or was misheard (perhaps deliberately) by some on the House Intelligence Committee.

That’s not what the sources from Schiff’s intelligence committee said to The Times, though. They printed the “bombshell” and then quickly noted how “muddied” the reports were. Sussing it out first may have been a better idea, but apparently this is just assembly-line journalism: They hear it from the committee and they’ll print it, apparently with very little gatekeeping filter in between.

And that’s exactly the point. What America remembers is the first bombshell: Trump is being helped by the Russians. All the subsequent talk about “nuance,” I guarantee you, isn’t going to stick in anyone’s memory, and no one’s going to care that leaking classified information is illegal.

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