'Bit of a panic': Trump adviser's attack on bombshell WaPo report fact-checked by expert

Donald Trump's former acting Director of National Intelligence, Ric Grenell, took issue with Friday's bombshell Washington Post report that accused Egypt of trying to funnel $10 million to his 2016 presidential campaign.

According to reporter Carol Leonnig, "A secret investigation pursued CIA intelligence indicating Egypt's president sought to illegally inject $10 million into Trump's cash-starved 2016 campaign. The Justice Department investigators discovered a mysterious $10 million cash withdrawal. But they were blocked from seeking key records to determine if Trump took the money, then the case was shut down."

"This is made up," Grenell posted on the social media site X. "It's not an exclusive. And it's fake news. It's been investigated and was dismissed. You pushed a fake Russian collusion story and the phony charge that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. Your boss Jeff Bezos said it best: 'People are not reading your stuff.' Right. I can't sugarcoat it anymore.'"

The quote attributed to Bezos was actually said by Washington Post publisher William Lewis, according to Fox News.

National security expert Marcy Wheeler fact-checked Grenell's claim that the story was false.

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"1) How could it be 'made up' if it was dismissed — because Barr shut down [the] subpoena? That's simply dumb!" Wheeler wrote. "2) Five of Trump's top flunkies confessed or were adjudged to have lied abt what happened with Russia."

Wheeler also wrote that the Post wasn't the "big entity who reported on the still-true Spook letter that the [Hunter Biden] laptop had the earmarks of a Russian info operation."

The infamous laptop was obtained by the FBI in 2019, but a reported "copy" of the hard drive was given to Rudy Giuliani, who then gave it to the conservative New York Post.

"When The Washington Post finally got access to the material in 2022, we were able to verify some of it as authentic. There was also evidence, though, that the material on the hard drive that went from Giuliani to the New York Post was moved around with some information added," wrote Philip Bump for the Post in June.

"Even Mac Isaac [the computer repair man who got access to the computer] warned that material being attributed to 'the laptop' was not on the laptop when he undertook the file recovery process."

Wheeler explained that "Russian involvement in the laptop cannot be ruled out."

"Wow. Poor Ric is in a bit of a panic," she wrote.