Sean Hannity’s desperation to help bail out his beloved Donald Trump from concerns about his ties to Russia would be laughable if it were not so potentially dangerous: Hannity is arguing that it wasn’t Russia that hacked the Democratic National Committee, as the Intelligence Community has reportedly found. No, Hannity is alleging that it was actually the CIA which then disguised its work by making it look like the Russians did it. 

At least twice last night, Hannity raised this ridiculous theory. First, in an interview with Sara Carter (transcript via FoxNews.com, with my emphases):

HANNITY: I have one last question. We did learn from WikiLeaks that the CIA uses stolen malware to give attribution, if you will, to cyber-attacks of other nations. In other words, they leave the fingerprints. They could do the job and leave the fingerprints and say, Oh, it looks like the Russians did it. Is that possible that that happened here?

Later, Hannity had this exchange with Lt. Gen. Tony Shaffer, a Fox News contributor with a questionable record on truthtelling:

SHAFFER: ATP 2829, the so called Russian tool that was used to hack the DNC, Sean, we did it. Not me, but our guys. Former members of NSA, retired intelligence officers use these tools to break in there and get the information out. That's what the Democrats don't want to talk about because it doesn't fit their narrative.

HANNITY: You know that for a fact? You know the Democrats did it -- or that former operatives did it using the malware techniques, that they put the Russian fingerprints on it and make it appear like the Russians. In other words, you're telling me this whole Russian story that the media has been running with for months and months and months, that it was our people that did it and they put the fingerprints of the Russians on it?

SHAFFER: That's right.

HANNITY: You have proof of that?

SHAFFER: I don't have proof of it, but I'm telling you this is what I've heard. And what I'm telling you is if you go back and actually talk to people inside, the evidence is not that the Russians did it. The evidence is a Russian tool was used. What I'm saying is concerned Americans who are fed up with the Clintons doing things I think were the ones who got in there and broke the information out and give it to WikiLeaks. And I've mentioned this to other reporters, by the way. They don't seem to be interested in going and checking this out, because it doesn't –

As Media Matters has reported, Hannity made the same wild accusation on his radio show yesterday. Media Matters also caught Hannity tweeting at Wikileaks for confirmation of his theory:

But The Intercept, which thought there was not conclusive-enough proof that Russia did the hacking into the DNC, also found that the latest release of Wikileaks files shows that the CIA repurposed hacking code to save time, not to frame Russia.

Unless I’m missing something, there’s also a glaring problem with the logic of Hannity's theory. If the Intelligence Community was engaged in some covert effort to make sure Hillary Clinton didn’t win the election, then why was it “spying,” as Hannity put it in his Carter interview, on the Trump organization? Why leak information about National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s improper contacts with Russia? Or is Hannity arguing that the “deep state,” which he claims is made up of Obama holdovers “very opposed” to Trump, a second rogue element of the government? I mean, come on!

Watch Hannity and Shaffer spin their conspiracy theories below, from the March 8, 2017 Hannity show.