The Trump admin is revealing the truth. The Washington, D.C. Swamp doesn’t like that.
Because now Donald Trump’s close ally has been threatened by the CIA Deep State.
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), disclosed that the intelligence supporting claims of Russia’s intent to secure Donald Trump’s election was deeply flawed and, in some cases, entirely fabricated, according to a Washington Post article. The minimally redacted report faced resistance from intelligence agency officials who cited concerns over revealing sensitive information.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other agencies raised objections, citing risks to “sources and methods,” according to unnamed sources familiar with the issue, as reported by the Post. Two former CIA officials who in 2017 asserted Russia supported Trump’s campaign told the newspaper they still stood by their findings.
Gabbard has accused former President Barack Obama and his intelligence leaders—CIA Director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey—of orchestrating a scheme to discredit Trump and subvert the 2016 election results.
The 46-page report, finalized in September 2020, stemmed from 2,300 hours of investigation and 20 interviews conducted in a secure facility at CIA headquarters. Senior CIA officials restricted the report’s removal from agency premises until recently, when CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Trump intervened, according to the Post.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) report revealed that subpar intelligence was manipulated, revived, or fabricated to promote the narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to aid Trump by undermining Hillary Clinton. A key “high confidence” claim about Putin’s intentions hinged on a single sentence fragment interpreted differently by five analysts.
The report specifically criticized former CIA Director Brennan for personally influencing the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) by selecting its authors and verbally sharing unverified intelligence to steer the conclusions.
Three weeks before the HPSCI report’s release, the CIA issued a self-assessment by its deputy director for analysis, whose name was withheld. It acknowledged “procedural anomalies” and Brennan’s significant influence but maintained the ICA’s “analytic rigor” surpassed most agency assessments.
HPSCI Chair Rick Crawford labeled the CIA’s self-assessment a “whitewash” shortly after its release, prompting Ratcliffe to push for the declassification of the more critical HPSCI report.
The Justice Department has launched a probe into alleged criminal actions by Obama-era officials, with Attorney General Pam Bondi forming a “strike force” and convening a grand jury to review evidence.
Sen. Mark R. Warner, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, called the report’s release “desperate and irresponsible,” according to the Post. “The release of the partisan House Intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe,” he said.
The Post omitted that recent declassifications included documents from an anonymous deputy national intelligence officer (DNIO) at the National Intelligence Council (NIC), whose approval would have supported the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) endorsement of the ICA. The whistleblower informed Gabbard he felt pressured by superiors but found the evidence lacking.
The DIA ultimately withheld its endorsement of the ICA. The whistleblower said he tried contacting Sen. Warner but received no response from his staff. Uncertainties persist about whether these disclosures will prompt changes among unnamed officials within the CIA and other agencies.
Gabbard noted that while key figures in the Russiagate controversy have left the intelligence community, the environment shaped by Brennan and Clapper persists. “When you talk about how do we change this, you have to recognize that both of them, John Brennan and James Clapper, as leaders in the intelligence community, they have their own disciples,” Gabbard said in a Tuesday interview with the New York Post. “They have a lot of their own people that they brought in with them or that they mentored in a mirroring of their own image.”
Brennan’s lasting impact on the CIA stems from a network of analysts he mentored, according to experts cited by the Daily Caller News Foundation. At least two analysts involved in the 2017 ICA remain influential at the CIA as employees or contractors.
The Washington Post itself faces scrutiny following these declassifications, having shared a 2018 National Reporting Pulitzer Prize with the New York Times for coverage of alleged Trump campaign-Kremlin ties, which is now the subject of a libel lawsuit filed by Trump against the Pulitzer board.
