You concluded with these two sentences:
If this is the case, a Dem Senator took a classified briefing and used it for purely political purposes. To this I say, it wasn't the first and won't be the last time. The modern professional political class sucks, in my not so humble but rather ticked opinion.
It would be very interesting to track this lie back in time and see when it went into widespread Dem use. Might take awhile, but I'll give it a shot. Tough to do in-depth research without a Lexis-Nexis subscription. But at least it's not impossible thanks to the Internet.