The Conspiracy Memo in Trump’s White House

New Yorker: “In early 2017, some of Donald Trump’s advisers concluded that they faced a sophisticated threat responsible for ‘coordinated attacks’ on the new Administration. They circulated a memo, titled ‘The Echo Chamber,’ which read like a U.S. military-intelligence officer’s analysis of a foreign-insurgent network. Instead of being about enemies in a distant war zone, however, the network described in the memo consisted of former aides to President Barack Obama.”

“The memo claimed that the ‘communications infrastructure’ that the Obama White House used to ‘sell Obamacare and the Iran Deal to the public’ had been moved to the private sector, now that the former aides were out of government. It called the network the Echo Chamber and accused its members of mounting a coördinated effort ‘to undermine President Trump’s foreign policy’ through organized attacks in the press against Trump and his advisers.”

“The memo is unsigned and undated, and Trump Administration officials familiar with it offered conflicting accounts of who authored it and whether it originated inside or outside the White House. The officials said that it was circulated within the National Security Council and other parts of the Trump White House in early 2017. They said the memo may have had additional pages. A National Security Council spokesperson declined to comment.”