Top intelligence officials and senators from both parties Thursday reaffirmed their conclusion that the Russian government used hacking and leaks to try to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Among them was Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia meddled in the U.S. election through hacking, propaganda and fake news.
Clapper said that Moscow's cyber assault on the election went beyond interference and into "activism."
And The Washington Post reported Friday morning that some of the intelligence-intercepted messages showed senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow and congratulated themselves on the outcome.
Of course, that intelligence about Russian hacking and influence is something that President-elect Donald Trump keeps trying to run away from.
He continues to rebuff the information because it delegitimizes his shaky win from the Electoral College. Trump lost the popular vote, with Hillary Clinton garnering about 3 million more votes than he received, yet Trump won the Electoral College vote thanks to ballots cast in Rustbelt states where the economy is poor and the election was very close.
Trump, meanwhile, insults, belittles and questions public servants who operate America's intelligence, while publicly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And on the Friday morning when Trump finally decided he had time to receive an intelligence briefing - he's blown most of them off - he sought to dominate the news with preposterous tweets. He took time to tweet a bait-and-switch headline grabber about how bad ratings "swamped" Arnold Schwarzenegger in the new season of Apprentice (Trump is still executive producer of the NBC reality TV show).
It's little wonder that Trump wants America's news media to focus on anything but this new intelligence report and Trump's briefing about it.
Given his taunting of the intelligence community (he calls its conclusions about Russia and its manipulation of the election a "witch hunt"), the Trump Tower briefing has taken on the look of a showdown between the president-elect and the intelligence agencies he has disparaged.
The revelation in The Washington Post and other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies are part of an unprecedented report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years, according to the Post.
The classified document, which officials said is more than 50 pages, was delivered to President Obama on Thursday, and was expected to be presented to Trump in New York on Friday by Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan. A shorter, declassified version is expected to be released to the public early next week.
Meanwhile, former CIA director R. James Woolsey Jr., a veteran of four presidential administrations and one of the nation's leading intelligence experts, resigned Thursday from Trump's transition team. Why? Because of growing tensions over Trump's treatment and vision for intelligence agencies.
People close to Woolsey said he had been excluded in recent weeks from discussions on intelligence matters with Trump and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the incoming White House national security adviser. They said that Woolsey had grown increasingly uncomfortable lending his name and credibility to the transition team without being consulted.
It's pretty clear why Trump made certain to tweet about Schwarzenegger's ratings. He sought to decoy news reporters and to puff himself up before getting Clapper's briefing.
Our whiner/bragger-in-chief-elect made certain that he timed his tweet to pop onto phone and computer screens right in the middle of "Morning Joe." MSNBC show host Joe Scarborough interrupted his guests to read it as "breaking news" (amidst a good bit of bewildered laughter).
Schwarzenegger, in response, tweeted moments later what the rest of us are thinking: Trump would best use his time working for us and preparing to be president rather than watching TV show ratings.
And in less than two weeks, Trump will be playing his "Groundhog Day" nightmare version of a reality show in our Oval Office.
Truth really is stranger than fiction. Sad.