Rick Wilson
2 min readJan 11, 2017

--

Fool Chan

  1. I’m not BuzzFeed’s source. Since their source was anonymous, and I don’t know who it was, I’ll settle it this way; if — arguendo — I had been their source, I hereby release the authors of the story, its editors, and BuzzFeed generally from any off-the-record/background protections of anonymity I would have asked for. Over to you, folks.
  2. More broadly, as regards the British memo run in BuzzFeed, I release ANY journalist I’ve talked to about Trump from any off-the-record/background protections of anonymity. Why? Because the first time I saw the memo was when BuzzFeed published it. I’ve never had possession of that memo, never shared it, never pitched it, and never requested or caused others to do so. Allegations from the memo were making the rounds in the IC, political, and media worlds, to be sure, but its origins are elsewhere.
  3. If you believe the Russian/4chan spin that this information came from them, you can’t use a calendar, or common sense. This information on Trump’s various personal and business dealings in Russia was being pursued by major campaigns and by major media to my knowledge as early as late July of 2015, and the “Ritz Carlton” information was out in the summer of 2016.
  4. The allegations I “took the memo to the CIA” (or caused others to do the same) are utterly, entirely, and profoundly false and risible.
  5. The information out there wasn’t from anonymous deep-cover chan-children. Unless, of course, many current and former senior IC and diplomatic officials here and abroad are secret weebs.
  6. The vast majority of stories we worked were about Trump’s financials and his relationship — and that of his team — with Russian interests. This was — to my estimate — as significant a compromise as anything in the sexual arena. He could easily refute and dismiss the financial ties by opening his tax returns and his books to scrutiny, but we know that’s not happening.
  7. The real shame of this entire situation is that we’re wasting valuable time Trump could be using to uncover the real secrets of John Podesta and Hillary Clinton’s PizzaGate global child kidnapping and cannibalism ring. You know, the important stuff. [UPDATE: Sarcasm]
  8. [UPDATE per a question] No, I did not commission the oppo report mentioned in the NYT.
  9. [ UPDATE per a question] I was not the emissary sent by McCain to meet with the Brit intel source. If you knew anything about my fraught history with McCain, you’d understand this was a ludicrous assertion.
  10. [UPDATE per a question] “The Thing” had nothing to do with Trump. Duh. Keep up.

--

--

Rick Wilson

NYT #1 bestselling author, Lincoln Project co-founder, ad-maker, writer.