New CIA Director Ratcliffe: Evidence Didn’t Support Brennan’s Explosive Trump-Russia Claims

Though many have moved past the notion that Donald Trump was a “Russian agent,” the belief persists among Washington insiders that he benefited from Russian interference. This belief stems from a 2017 intelligence document produced during the Obama administration, which classified its sources at the highest levels. The report, known as an intelligence community assessment (ICA), concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 elections to assist Trump, a claim that has largely gone unchallenged by the media and politicians from both major parties.

Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 election, continues to blame Putin for her defeat. She has insisted, “There’s no doubt in my mind [that Putin] wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win,” echoing the ICA’s findings. This perspective is shared by many Democrats who view the report as a clear explanation for Trump’s rise to power.

However, former intelligence chief John Ratcliffe, who has examined the evidence behind the ICA, remains unconvinced by its conclusions. His skepticism was revealed in written testimony he submitted to the Senate during his CIA director confirmation process. Ratcliffe was confirmed last Thursday, taking on a prominent role at Langley.

In a pre-hearing questionnaire, Senate Democrats questioned Ratcliffe about the ICA’s findings. They specifically inquired if he agreed with the assessment that “Putin’s goals in influencing the 2016 presidential election included ‘denigrat[ing] Secretary Clinton, and harm[ing] her electability and potential presidency’.” They also wanted to know if he concurred with the conclusion that “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

Ratcliffe responded that after reviewing the underlying intelligence, he could only agree that “Russia’s goal was to undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and sow division among the American people.” He pointed out that Russian social media campaigns targeted both Trump and Clinton. This suggested to him that the primary aim was to create discord rather than support one candidate over the other.

In his testimony, Ratcliffe highlighted that Moscow has long employed tactics like propaganda, disinformation, and cyberattacks against U.S. elections and other Western democracies. This implies that the 2016 influence operations were not a novel strategy. As Trump’s director of the Office of National Intelligence, Ratcliffe had firsthand access to the underlying evidence.

In 2020, Ratcliffe uncovered a CIA document from 2016 revealing that Clinton had approved “a plan” by her adviser, Jake Sullivan, to link Trump to Putin and the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee. This CIA document seemed to contradict the ICA’s later findings, which were prepared by John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, who was tasked with assessing Russia’s role in the election after Trump’s victory.

Brennan had even included unfounded rumors about Trump and Putin from a dossier funded by the Clinton campaign as an annex to the ICA. Suspicious of these actions, Ratcliffe decided to delve deeper into the ICA’s development. He requested a briefing from CIA members involved in drafting the assessment.

After interviewing the CIA analysts and examining the underlying intelligence, Ratcliffe reached different conclusions. He found the evidence much weaker than Brennan claimed and did not support the assertions made about Putin’s preference for Trump. This contradicts what the public has been led to believe about one of the most critical intelligence reports in recent U.S. history.

By framing Trump as a pawn for Putin, the ICA sparked investigations by a special counsel and both Senate and House intelligence committees. It also served as the basis for numerous articles questioning Trump’s legitimacy, some of which won prestigious awards. Trump aide Hope Hicks mentioned that the ICA was seen internally as his “Achilles’ heel,” undermining his achievements by perpetuating the belief that Russia helped him win.

The national media have largely ignored Ratcliffe’s revelations and several red flags regarding the ICA’s creation. Contrary to reports, the assessment did not reflect the consensus of “all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.” It was hastily compiled by a select group of CIA analysts under Brennan, who only consulted with the FBI and NSA.

Even the NSA, which is responsible for intercepting communications from Moscow, dissented from the key assessment that Putin intended to install Trump. Brennan had to persuade a skeptical FBI Director James Comey to align with this judgment. Two agencies with expertise in Russian intelligence, the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency, were not consulted.

Brennan dismissed input from the CIA’s Russia House, which has long dealt with Russian intelligence. When senior managers from Russia House expressed their agreement with the NSA’s dissent, Brennan overruled them, claiming they lacked access to all the intelligence he had seen. The ICA notably did not include an annex with dissenting opinions, breaking from previous practices.

Instead, it attached information from the politically motivated Steele dossier, which supported Brennan’s conclusions. A summary of this Clinton-funded dossier appeared as a two-page annex. Special Counsel John Durham’s report later debunked every claim from the dossier using subpoenaed communications.

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Joe Messina

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