According to Schiff’s memo, when the Justice Department sought a warrant to surveil Page in 2016, it presented the court with contextual information about Russian election interference. The court was told that Russian agents “previewed their hack and dissemination of stolen emails” to George Papadopoulos, another Trump foreign policy adviser. Papadopoulos has since pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his Russian contacts, and we knew he’d been told that Russia had emails that could embarrass Hillary Clinton. But this is the first public confirmation that Papadopoulos had advance notice of a Russian plan to release these emails.

“The language in the memo is new, and I think significant,” Schiff told me. When Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner had their infamous meeting with Russian emissaries at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, “at least someone on the campaign was aware that not only did the Russians have dirt on Clinton, they had emails, and they were prepared to disseminate them in anonymous fashion.”

Perhaps Trump didn’t realize that his campaign was being run by alleged Russian money launderers, that at least two of his foreign policy advisers had entanglements with Russian intelligence, and that his campaign had a heads up about Russian plans to dump stolen Clinton emails online. None of last week’s new information proves that Trump is too disloyal to his own country to be president. But the only alternative is that he’s too clueless.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/opinion/trump-russia-election-conspiracy.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur