🧵In 2018 the Senate Intelligence Committee asked me to field a team and analyze a data set that social media platforms had turned over: several hundred gigs of data chronicling a multi-year effort to divide American society *and* interfere in an American election
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/retc...The committee's inquiry was bipartisan. My report was part of a blinded process; others also investigated the data. The reason for the blinding was bc of the political sensitivity.
Each of the 2 teams found, unequivocally, that the data showed interference. Efforts to boost Trump's candidacy.
Interference is not collusion. We used to be able to keep these concepts separate in our head. But as the years went on, partisan hacks & Substack cranks began retconning "Russiagate" -- and an intelligence committee assessment released in Jan 2017 -- to imply that even interference was a "hoax".
That effort has now reached the office of the Director of the CIA. A Tradecraft Review released last week reassessed a confidence level of their Jan 2017 opinion. That's fine; it's important to review things.
But Ratcliffe's spin on a procedural review ignores all the findings that came out after.
Renee DiResta
