An NBC News headline reads, “U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack.” According to the story, unnamed U.S. intelligence officials believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin is personally responsible for instigating the now-infamous hack attack on the DNC. The article continues to cite these “unnamed officials” as if what they’re leaking is gospel truth. Clearly, NBC News has little fear of potentially reporting “fake news.”

On the other hand, a WikiLeaks source claims the Russians had nothing to do with hacking the DNC emails. Instead, the source was a disgruntled Democrat staffer who was disgusted with Clinton and shared the damaging information in a secret deep-throat-style meeting. This also is a rather dubious story that may be aimed at attempting to boost WikiLeaks’ relevance.

In fact, the larger story, which much of the mainstream media has conveniently ignored, is the fact that the directors of National Intelligence canceled a closed-door briefing with the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. This prompted Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) to express his frustration: “It is unacceptable that the Intelligence Community directors would not fulfill the House Intelligence Committee’s request to be briefed tomorrow on the cyber-attacks that occurred during the presidential campaign. The legislative branch is constitutionally vested with oversight responsibility of executive branch agencies, which are obligated to comply with our requests.”

Nunes continued, stating that his committee “is vigorously looking into reports of cyber-attacks during the election campaign.” He continued, “In particular we want to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us. The committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes.”

It is indeed puzzling that the nation’s intelligence directors would remain silent while unnamed officials from their agencies relate unsubstantiated reports to the media. Why dodge informing Congress? Why allow for the continued appearance of the intelligence community anonymously meddling in politics through the mass media?

What is known is that there has been no official report stating that the Russians hacked the DNC in order to help elect Donald Trump. There is no evidence of Russian interference in actual voting. And regarding those leaked DNC emails, nothing from them was fabricated — those were genuine and did indeed shed light on Democrat campaign manipulation. It wasn’t the Russians who made Hillary Clinton unlikable; Hillary has only herself to blame for that.