CHANGE: Democratic Sen. Chris Coons backtracks on Trump campaign-Russia claim.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on Sunday said he was not aware of any collusion between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials to rig the election despite saying days earlier that there were “transcripts” of such activity.

“I have no hard evidence of collusion,” Coons told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “To the extent those comments that you just replayed might in some way be misinterpreted as leading to a hyperventilating attitude here in the Senate about this, I apologize for that.”

Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction. Now it’s being rowed back because the talk of “transcripts” supports the spying-on-Trump storyline.

Will we ever know? Maybe, if there’s a proper investigation into Obama Administration political spying.

Meanwhile, the rumors being floated about Trump are being retracted, and once everyone from Comey to Clapper has denied that he was ever under investigation, future “leaks” will come pre-discredited.