Your first question? I have no idea.  Do you know?  The slant of the news articles on this seems to be "OMG, Jared discussed back channels with the Russians - that's NEVER happened before!"  

Yes, they should mention them.  I'll wait to see whether the proof is there that they didn't, then see if the contacts actually had nefarious doings.  A couple weeks ago Reuters had headlines shouting about 18 undisclosed contacts, which was gleefully parroted by folks commenting here, only they didn't bother to read down to the 5th or 6th paragraph that said those who had analyzed the contacts found nothing problematic about them.  Some outlets seem to be very trusting of what Russians have to say.  Of course they would NEVER shade the truth to create more problems for the American administration /s

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