excerpt:
Washington was still in a stupor in the weeks following the shocking—at least to some—election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States. Precisely a month after Election Day, the next chapter of the story began.
On December 8, 2016, President Obama was scheduled to receive a classified President’s Daily Brief (PDB) the following day, which would assess Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The verdict? “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results” through cyber means. The Intelligence Community (IC) expressed only “low-to-moderate confidence” that any foreign operation had even attempted to tamper with election infrastructure.
The facts were clear: no votes had changed, and no election systems had been breached.
Before December 8, internal IC consensus held that Russia lacked both the intent and the capability to corrupt the vote. A September 12 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) had concluded that foreign adversaries “do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyberattacks” on U.S. election infrastructure.
Yet by mid-December, the CIA publicly attributed intent not merely to disrupt but to help Trump win—a stark departure from what agencies, including the FBI and CIA, had privately concluded.
Delusions of Adequacy 
Now they face burial.
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