Part of the active effort to defend Trump and his administration and campaign against accusations that they directly engaged with the Russians to alter the outcome of the 2016 presidential election appears to be the faking of explosive documents, sent to news agencies. When these fake documents are then used, and subsequently discredited, the news agency, the reporters, the specific story at hand, and the entire investigation against Trump and his people all lose credibility.

Here, Rachel Maddow reports on a document sent to “Send it to Rachel.”

Who is behind this attack? I assume someone who would lose if actual involvement between Trump and Putin’s people became known. This might even strengthen the argument that such involvement happened, otherwise why go through all this trouble to throw the American press off the scent? Also, as you’ll see from Rachel Maddow’s reporting of this, the individual, individuals, or organization involved in this probably has some limitations on their understanding of certain aspects of security. The job they’ve done in the two known instances is good but not that good.

We have no way of knowing at the moment if similar attacks have happened against Congress or the Special Council’s office.

It seems to really be a thing, and in some ways this is not really unexpected. This is a fascinating story.

Also, printers are not anonymous.