he knew mike flynn. that is not in dispute. they were in communications or understanding. whether it was about this particular thing i think is still a matter for more reporting. kellyanne conway told us she had known peter smith but hadn t seen him in some time. matt came away with this impression after several conversations with peter smith that he was holding himself out as someone involved in the campaign. we want to be very careful in our own reporting that we re just saying as much as we know at this point, and that was very much matt s depression at the time. i think the idea that somehow peter smith was some completely unknown entity to people in the trump campaign doesn t really hold up. i thought it was very notable that a trump campaign official told us for our first story that if peter smith was engaged with general flynn in some kind of coordination, that was something that general flynn was doing on his own as a private citizen. i m not sure where the campaign draws that
operating in coordination with the trump campaign. quote, my perception then was that the inclusion of trump campaign officials on this document was not merely a name dropping exercise. this document was about establishing a company to conduct opposition research on behalf of the campaign but operating at a distance to avoid campaigning. the combination of smith s deep knowledge of the inner workings of the campaign, this document naming him in the trump campaign group and the multiple references to needing to avoid campaign reporting suggested to me that the group was formed with the blessing of the trump campaign. so peter smith, putting together this effort, listing members of the trump campaign who he s operating with, coordinating with to the extent available by law, but when it comes to listing the trump campaign people who were involved in this effort, he lists himself under the subheading trump campaign. hmm.
these e-mails from russian hackers. and shane, in your reporting, you re very clear about the fact that there s no indication that smith was working for the trump campaign when he was doing this. you describe it as being an independent effort in support of trump s campaign, but independent from the campaign. in matt tate s writeup, he s basically saying smith described himself as being part of the campaign, that he listed his own name under the subheading trump campaign when he was circulating this document of people who were at least being read in on what this effort was all about. does that seem contradictory to you? i don t think so. i think what we re dealing with right now is trying to understand the degree of connection between these two worlds. for the first part, it is clear that peter smith knew people in the trump campaign.
unfortunate for jeb bush that his campaign kickoff butted right up against donald trump s much splashier campaign kickoff. but from the perspective of the bush campaign, the timing of the bush launch had been very carefully thought out. maybe they didn t think very much about donald trump also launching at that time. but they had reason to launch him, launch jeb, on june 15th. and that s because right before june 15th, jeb bush would be returning from what the campaign expected to be a triumphant european tour. the visuals would be perfect. yet another member of the bush family confidently striding through european capitals, meeting world leaders. jeb bush had been doing that sort of diplomacy for decades, now he would be doing it on his own terms. the idea was to imagine him as president.
security information was redacted, like people s social security numbers, they re addresses, their phone numbers, they re detailed descriptions of their medical problems. all of those things were still included in the e-mails when they were collated and published as jeb bush s book. they put that book out initially with all that personal information for people in there. then they had to go back retroactively after the fact and try to x all that stuff out. in terms of launch date itself for the jeb bush campaign, almost no one remembers the details of that at all, because within 24 hours, his campaign launch speech was stomped on and totally eclipsed in the press by another guy launching his presidential campaign the very next day. but there was one other thing that they planned for the launch of jeb bush s campaign that just went terribly wrong. and i think we are now today getting the payoff from what that was. it of course ended up being