In Twitter Rant Trump Responds to Allegations His Top Associates Were in Constant Contact With Russia During Campaign

“Non-Sense” “Conspiracy Theories” “Blind Hatred”

President Donald Trump early Wednesday morning responded to allegations, first published Tuesday night by The New York Times, that members of his inner circle were in frequent contact with top intelligence officials in the Russian government in the year leading up to the November election. As usual, Trump took to Twitter to unleash a rant denying the charges while attacking the credibility of the sources, while looking for support in other outlets.

In a series of tweets the President called the highly-sourced allegations “non-sense,” “conspiracy theories,” “blind hatred,” and “an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign.”

Trump singled out MSNBC and CNN as “fake news” while praising Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” as “great!” And he attacked The New York Times and the Washington Post as “failing,” which is wholly false.

The President also took a swing at his own intelligence agencies by quoting a Bloomberg News opinion columnist who attacked the NSA and the FBI in a Tuesday piece that was overall very unflattering to Trump.

The commander-in-Chief also lashed out at those who say he is too soft on Russia by trying to use President Barack Obama as a shield.

An hour later Trump, apparently still dissatisfied, posted another tweet to re-litigate his case:

Actually, the real scandal here is not the leaks but the possibly illegal communications between a presidential campaign and a hostile foreign government. Leaks, ironically, are what Trump used throughout the presidential race to attack Hillary Clinton and he had no issue with them at the time.

So, what exactly did The New York Times report?

“Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.”

That’s stunning, a bombshell, and just the opening paragraph in one story that confirms what many American believed throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.

The intercepted communications “alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies,” the Times reports, “in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.”

The Times make clear both Trump campaign officials and employees of Trump’s companies were in regular contact with Russian intelligence and other Russian government officials. The paper names Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman who left under a cloud of allegations about secret payments from a Ukraine political party very friendly with the Kremlin. It also points to Carter Page, a business associate of Trump, Roger Stone, a far right Republican political associate and former Trump advisor, and of course Trump’s now-fired National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn.

CNN reported separately that “Trump aides were in constant touch with senior Russian officials during campaign.”

“High-level advisers close to then-presidential nominee Donald Trump were in constant communication during the campaign with Russians known to US intelligence, multiple current and former intelligence, law enforcement and administration officials tell CNN.”

A Twitter rant is not going to make this scandal disappear. And neither President Trump’s denials nor the refusal to investigate by top Republican lawmakers, like Senate Intelligence chair Devin Nunes, will satisfy the American people for whom they work.