Mr. Watts testified on March 30, 2017, at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing and presented a statement, “Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns.”
Last week, in a sentencing memorandum for the lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan, the special counsel’s office noted that Rick Gates and “Person A” — an unnamed figure who has ties to a “Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016” — “were directly communicating in September and October 2016.”
What coverage there was of this staggering claim — evidence of a direct link between a member of Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian intelligence — and the Van Der Zwaan filing was quickly overtaken by controversy over the president’s relationship with an adult film star.
