What do you know about that?
FBI Director James Comey has concluded that the CIA analysis is correct, that the Russians hacked into our nation’s electoral process and might have helped Donald J. Trump win the election over Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Oh, the irony is amazing.
Just to be clear, I am not going to suggest that Comey’s conduct near the end of the presidential campaign cost Clinton the victory most of us thought she would win. The letter to Congress about those e-mails may have contributed some to Hillary’s defeat. Was it decisive? Did it doom her campaign by itself? I don’t believe so.
But now we have the FBI climbing aboard the CIA hay wagon, endorsing the spook agency’s findings that the Russians sought to do the very thing Comey has been accused of doing.
I don’t know all the facts about how the FBI works. I damn sure know even less about the CIA and the work its agents and analysts do to compile intelligence information. I probably don’t want to know.
When two pre-eminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies draw the same conclusion, though, that’s a huge deal.
If only the president-elect would exhibit some respect for the work these professionals do every day, rather than dissing them while denigrating their findings.
Indeed, the candidate who himself questioned the integrity of the electoral process — remember how the president-elect proclaimed the system to be “rigged” against him? — ought to be among the loudest voices demanding a full accounting of what the Russians have done … allegedly.