If I'm in Afghanistan and I have reason to believe the GRU has a bounty on my head? I run that up the chain. If it comes back down the chain that nothing will be done? I run that to the Washington Post. If I'm in the Washington Post and I get this tip? I follow up. And that's all the motive we need.Who ever leaked this had a motive.
I just read a longish profile of Fiona Hill in the new Yorker. In it, she describes is decent detail how individuals inside the administration leak things to the press for the sole purpose of making other individuals look bad to the president, not to the public. They use the press to backstab each other without any regard to the public responsibility of either the government or the media. I'm sure this has been done in the past, but I'm also sure it's never been weaponized this way.
Looking bad to the public has been no impediment to anyone in this administration, other than getting heckled at restaurants. Everyone there is a brazen opportunist and curtailing the opportunity of your opponent is just checkers. The basic problem is that integrity is a handicap in this administration, so this is what we get.
It's quite the war of "who knew what, when" right now. The waters have been muddied. We need documentation. It exists, but Trump may have eaten it all by 8 AM tomorrow morning. Prediction: Trump was indeed alerted to this intel, called up Vlad, and took his word against our own intelligence community, just like in Helsinki. edit: for Trump, every event is an opportunity, right? This will be a convenient loyalty test for his IC top brass.