Mean Girls of Washington DC? Democratic congressman & acting DNI in Twitter squabble over Russiagate reveal

28 May, 2020 20:58 / Updated 5 years ago

Former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has warned California Rep. Eric Swalwell that incriminating Russiagate transcripts will soon be declassified, hitting back after the Democrat slammed him as a Trump lackey.

Swalwell mocked the Trump appointee’s apparent failure to deliver promised recordings of the fateful conversations between former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian diplomat Sergei Kislyak, reigniting a week-old Twitter exchange with a new barb on Thursday. 

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All you have to show for your work is the dirt on your boots for shoveling and burying evidence for” Trump, the congressman snarked.

Insisting the Flynn tapes would be released in due time, Grenell hit back at Swalwell for “spreading the Russian [collusion] propaganda” all over TV despite no proof to back up the oft-repeated claim - and wasting “tens of millions of taxpayer dollars weaponizing the US government” in the quest for that particular holy grail.

Grenell was appointed acting DNI in February and just stepped down, after former Congressman John Ratcliffe was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in. In Thursday’s exchange he accused Swalwell of suppressing Russiagate transcripts because their sworn contents didn’t match the wild collusion claims the congressman was making in public, quipping that the offending transcripts (which Grenell planned to make public soon in a way that Swalwell would not like) were “the only thing you didn’t leak to the DC media.

Swalwell dismissed the ex-DNI’s accusations of “lying to the American people over and over again” with a dismissive chuckle. “Lay off the Trump Kool-Aid. You’ve had too much.

The two traded jabs for over two hours, neither willing to give an inch - though both at least had a well-stocked reservoir of creative insults and apparently little real work to do. A handful of #Resistance loyalists joined in, though they lacked Swalwell’s single-minded devotion to keeping the insult fires going.

The California congressman started the war of words over a week ago when he called out Grenell for concealing “the truth about what Russia is doing” to “bury evidence” of supposed interference in the 2020 election on a Daily Beast podcast. Never mind that the election hasn’t even happened yet - those sneaky Russians are everywhere, even in the future.

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