Nicolle Wallace wants names of Trump campaign staff who worked with Putin 'to see where their loyalties lie'
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and her opening panel on Tuesday wants to know names about the former officials in President Donald Trump's administration and campaign who worked with Russians to spread misinformation during the election and hack.
It was revealed in an intelligence report declassified Tuesday that Trump and his campaign were coordinating with Russia on the election. The declassified report came from the U.S. National Intelligence Council, which is part of the broader United States Intelligence Community (IC), saying that the Chinese and Iran had nothing to do with any 2020 election meddling as previously claimed by the Trump White House.
Wallace played a clip of Trump's then-lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell during a press conference claiming the election was hacked by the late Hugo Chaves and Venezuela that somehow took over Dominion Voting Systems. The claims were all false, and Guiliani is now being sued by Dominion for millions for spreading the lies.
Giuliani "is blaming foreign governments," said Wallace. "Donald Trump knew what we learned today. There was no foreign interference that affected the outcome of the election. Let me read again, the findings from the reports released today. The department's investigated multiple public claims. I'm told it's those two chiefly, 'that one or more foreign governments owned, directed or controlled election infrastructure used in the 2020 federal elections implemented a scheme to manipulate election infrastructure, or tally, change or otherwise manipulated vote counts.' The departments found those claims were not credible. So, Donald Trump had access to the intelligence at the moment that he was reveling in that weird performance from his own lawyers."
Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs recalled report after report revealing that Trump would completely lose it if anyone brought up Russia to him in an intelligence report.
"So, he was cognizant when the truth was out there, except when he thought lying about what was happening would benefit him in this campaign," said Gibbs. "So it is pretty stark reports to layout there. And it's going to require, quite frankly, I think, a fairly robust response from the current administration, particularly as it relates to Russia and continued disinformation."
Wallace noted that the ODNI report named names involved with spreading lies and misinformation that they knew was wrong. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has been accused of carrying water for Russia on multiple occasions, met with Russian individuals.
"Something else it does is it will inform people who are working with Russia and not interested in what Elizabeth [Neumann] describes," said Wallace. "Here's what the intelligence community found:'The key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of people linked to Russian intelligence to launder influence narratives, including misleading or unsubstantiated narratives against Mr. Biden through U.S. media organizations, U.S. officials and prominent U.S. individuals. Some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration."
Neumann had just commented that Russia has been sowing the seeds of division for the last several years and it has been perpetuated by Trump.
"So, I think that what Elizabeth describes is probably close to what's in Joe Biden's heart," said Wallace about bipartisanship. "But if you've got people who are U.S. officials, prominent U.S. individuals, some close to former president trump and his administration, who are more loyal to Putin than to this country, I think it's worth finding out who they are and understanding where their loyalties lie."
Gibbs agreed, noting that it has become clear that the party of Ronald Reagan is now taking talking points from the KGB and spreading through to Fox News and other conservative outlets.
"I think it's hard not to call on those individuals to account for their actions," Gibbs said. "I think, look, I think we're all for unity and bipartisanship. We'd like to see more of it, but I think when you have individuals, both in the Oval Office, meeting in the Oval Office, that are taking known amounts of disinformation, again, peddled by a former KGB agent, into the atmosphere of this country and, quite frankly, sowing and fomenting that disconnection, that disunity, I think it's hard to move forward without calling it out."
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