Media mangle Comey's Russia testimony

Media reports this week inaccurately played up the idea that FBI Director James Comey said Russia was pushing hard for Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton, by omitting a critical portion of the intelligence community's assessment that said Russia was actually preparing for a Clinton victory, and was seeking to undermine her.

During his testimony, Comey summarized an intelligence report from January that looked at how Russia attempted to interfere in the election.

"We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency," the report said. "We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign then focused on undermining her expected presidency."

Comey paraphrased the report during his testimony. "When Mr. Trump became the nominee, there was some sense that it'd be great if he could win, be great if we could help him," said Comey. "But we need to hurt her to matter what, and then it shifted to he has no chance, so let's just focus on undermining her. That was the judgment of the intelligence community."

Comey added that Putin "hated" Democrat Hillary Clinton "so much" that his preference was "for the person running against the person he hated so much."