Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in Colorado Springs, Colo. on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020. Trump said Friday that a disclosure by American intelligence officials that Russia was again meddling in a presidential election in his favor was merely another partisan campaign against him, dismissing the warning as a hoax cooked up by rivals.
The New York Times Com pany
LAS VEGAS — President Donald Trump said Friday that a disclosure by American intelligence officials that Russia was again meddling in a presidential election in his favor was merely another partisan campaign against him, dismissing the warning as a hoax cooked up by rivals.
“Another misinformation campaign is being launched by Democrats in Congress saying that Russia prefers me to any of the Do Nothing Democrat candidates who still have been unable to, after two weeks, count their votes in Iowa,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Hoax number 7!”
The intelligence assessment, delivered last Thursday to lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee, determined that Russia is planning to interfere in the 2020 primaries as well as the general election. But the way it was delivered angered some Republicans, and the attendance of Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the committee who led the impeachment proceedings, particularly angered Trump.
The president’s decision to remove Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, and install Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and a fervent loyalist, was also seen as a direct outcome of the briefing. On Thursday evening, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, an ally and a vocal opponent of impeachment, was one of the candidates under consideration as a permanent successor. By Friday morning, Collins said he was not interested.
“This is not a job that interests me; at this time, it’s not one that I would accept because I’m running a Senate race down here in Georgia,” Collins said in an interview on Fox News.
Trump has a long history of discarding assessments made by intelligence agencies that he has deemed unfair or unflattering. Multiple intelligence groups have determined that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and, before the 2018 midterms, delivered warnings that Russia was prepared to do it again. Early in his presidency, Trump grudgingly accepted those assessments before falling back on personal assurances from President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
“He said he didn’t meddle,” Trump said in November 2017. “I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it.”
