A newly released intelligence report sheds more light on the rickety foundation of the Russia collusion hoax that was used to shake confidence in President Donald Trump’s first term.
“One scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win,” according to the Sept. 18, 2020, Oversight Investigation and Referral into the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) titled, “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election.”
It shows “The ICA ignored strong indicators supporting the alternative hypothesis that, at a minimum, Putin didn’t care who won and even had reasons to prefer a Clinton victory,” and that “By adopting a single-track explanation for Putin’s actions — that he ‘preferred’ candidate Trump and ‘aspired’ to help him win — the ICA authors had little choice but to ignore contrary evidence and attempt to force-fit weak evidence to make their case.”
Former President Barack Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, called for the publication of 15 reports based on old intelligence, “three of which were substandard — containing information that was unclear, of uncertain origin, potentially biased, or implausible — and those became foundational sources for ICA judgments that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin preferred Trump over Clinton,” the report reads.
The ICA also shows the discredited Steele Dossier was misrepresented as “intelligence reporting of Russian plans and intentions,” according to the report.
The Steele Dossier, “violated so many … directives that the text would normally not have passed the first-line supervisor review at CIA, FBI, or other [intelligence community] agencies,” the report reads. “Moreover, the dossier made outlandish claims and was written in an amateurish conspiracy and political propaganda tone that invited skepticism, if not ridicule, over its content.”
High level CIA officers argued with Brennan that the dossier should not be included in the ICA “Because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards, according to a senior officer present at the meeting,” the report reads.
For the Russia hoax to stick, the Obama Administration needed something proving that Trump and Putin were working together to help Trump win in 2016. But they didn’t have that. Trump could not have colluded with someone who did not care about the outcome of the election.
The report notes numerous times that Putin expected Clinton to win the election.
Obama’s intelligence community circulated a memo two days before the 2016 election saying “Putin did not care who wins the election” and that Putin said he was “prepared to outmaneuver whichever candidate wins.”
But Brennan ignored all that and, at Obama’s direction after the election, put the intelligence community to work to bring Trump down.
“On 6 December 2016, almost a month after the election, the president ordered the directors of the CIA, FBI, and NSA to review their work to date on the Russian influence campaign, And to quickly produce the ICA — to include an unclassified version — for release in early January, according to CIA officers involved in producing the ICA,” the report reads.
By December 22, Brennan had the final draft. Both the classified and unclassified versions of the ICA were put out two weeks before Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The report indicates the rushed report was timed with political motivation, “To ensure the ICA was rolled out to the Congress and world media by the outgoing administration.”
“By finishing the ICA before the new president was inaugurated, the outgoing [Brennan] retained total control over who could see the raw intelligence cited, who was allowed to review the draft, and what comments would be accepted or rejected,” the report continues. “Senior, experienced CIA officers who objected that the intelligence did not support the key judgment that Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win, were silenced by [Brennan] in December 2016. Those officers might have had their voices heard if the ICA’s publication delayed until after the inauguration, to allow the incoming [CIA director] to manage the process.”
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
