In his piece, David Corn described a former Western intelligence officer who was well-respected in his field who had gathered this inflammatory information on Trump that was starting to circulate in political circles.īut again, because the intel itself, the allegations themselves about Trump hadn`t been independently verified by the journalists who were hearing about it and reporting on it, the intel really could only be described in very, very vague terms. He published just before election on Halloween night last year. He was first to publish a piece on this intel project, this intel reporting on Trump. Now, David Corn and "Mother Jones" magazine, he did get out ahead of the pack. You call around, you talk to sources, you work what you got.Īnd that process last summer of reporters calling around to their sources to check out this rumored thing that they had heard about, that was the very casual way a lot of people in Washington first heard about the supposed dossier, which we now call it, the dossier of alleged Russian dirt on Donald Trump. You call all the sources you know, who might conceivably have heard something about this, to see if they can give you any other detail, any other angle on what you`re trying to track down. You try to retrace the steps of the purported investigator as best you can to try to independently corroborate what`s in these reports that you`ve heard about. But lots of reporters did try to chase it down.Īnd the way you try to chase things down is exactly what you think. Nobody published anything on it for months. Now, it was just people talking about it. Last July, around that time, there were a bunch of reporters who started hearing about this private intel project that had turned up, this Russia specific information about Donald Trump. That call last July, that`s how Rick Wilson learned, that`s the way a lot of people learned that there was something out there rumored, right, described vaguely, something out there about Trump that seemed like it might be really worse than your standard political oppo in this country. He`s involved at a professional level in Republican politics for a long time. He`s a guy who hears about opposition research. He got a call that was an inquiry as to whether or not he had heard that stuff. There are some, but not many.īack during the election last year, last July, which was right after we started getting the first reporting about how Russia appeared to be involved in the hacking attacks on the Democratic Party`s e-mail servers, last July, Rick Wilson got a call from a reporter about something very strange, and honestly, very worrying that was starting to circulate about Donald Trump.Īn investigative reporter in the TV news business called up Rick Wilson and said, hey, basically, you`re a never Trump guy, have you heard anything about this private intel operation that has turned up supposedly a whole sheaf of allegations about Trump being connected to Russia? About Russia having compromising material on Trump? And Trump being involved, or at least informed about this Russia hacking the Democratic Party? He`s the unusual high-profile Republican who started off as a no to Trump guy. He was a Marco Rubio supporter in the Republican presidential primary last year.īut unlike a lot of other professional Republicans, including Senator Rubio himself, Rick Wilson didn`t decide to eat his criticism of Donald Trump once Trump won the nomination and ultimately the election. And he`s one of that endangered species of modern Republicans that is not afraid to be very vocally critical for President Trump.Īnd for Rick Wilson, that has been true all along. And he also has a good sense of humor, which makes hit great on TV. Part of the reason he is such a popular guest is he`s not only very connected in Republican politics, he knows a lot of what`s going on inside the party. He`s appeared on lots of different shows. Rick Wilson is a Republican political operative. MADDOW: Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour as well. Appreciate it.ĬHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, "ALL IN": Thank you. RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Show: THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW Date: August 23, 2017
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