David Corn writes:

Vladimir Putin must be delighted. With the recent indictment of Igor Danchenko, the primary source for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s 2016 dossier that alleged ties between Donald Trump and Moscow, the Trump-Russia denialists have had a field day. They have blasted the media for its reporting on Steele’s memos and claimed that this further undermining of his reports demonstrates the Russia scandal was a hoax.

That last point is disinformation.

Certainly, the credibility of Steele’s memos has been, once more, severely impugned. (I’ve been assailed for having been the first journalist to reveal their existence—more on that shortly). But the controversy over these documents is distinct from from the dark and troubling core of the Trump-Russia affair. In fact, it’s a distraction and a deflection. The Steele dossier—and how it was covered by media outlets—is but a sideshow to the main event: how the Kremlin clandestinely attacked the 2016 election to help Trump become president and how Trump and his crew aided and abetted that assault on American democracy.

Let’s start at the beginning. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s relationship with Putin and Russia was a key question. He often spoke positively—even effusively—about the repressive Russian leader. And in June 2016, the news broke that Russian hackers had penetrated the computers of the Democratic National Committee. Weeks later—at the start of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia—WikiLeaks dumped documents that had been swiped by the Russian cyber-thieves.

Clearly, this was a move by Moscow to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Other dumps designed to undermine Democrats followed in subsequent weeks. Despite the consensus among cybersecurity specialists that the Kremlin was behind these attacks on America’s election, Trump and his top aides stridently denied any Moscow involvement—even as Trump himself publicly encouraged Russian hackers to target Clinton. [Continue reading…]