WASHINGTON — Former CIA Director John Brennan ignored warnings from “veteran” officers in December 2016 and ordered the publication of a “substandard” intelligence report that claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Donald Trump win that year’s presidential election, according to a bombshell congressional report made public Wednesday.
The intelligence agency’s conclusion helped fuel Democratic and liberal claims that Trump and his campaign had illegally conspired with Moscow to win the White House — allegations that dogged much of the president’s first term and culminated in an investigation by then-special counsel Robert Mueller, which concluded there was no evidence of such a plot.
The House Intelligence Committee compiled the “egregious” errors made by the CIA in triggering the Russia investigation in a 44-page classified report published in September 2020 — errors that included burying intelligence that the Kremlin was preparing for a possible victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard.
The committee’s findings also show that “fabricated” information from the since-debunked Steele dossier — funded by the Democratic National Committee as well as Clinton’s campaign and named for the ex-MI6 spy who compiled it— was crammed into the CIA productover the objections of senior officials.
When confronted about the intelligence in the dossier failing to meet “basic tradecraft standards,” Brennan is quoted in the report as responding, “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?”
FBI Director James Comey also advocated for the dossier’s inclusion in what became known as an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Russia’s actions around the 2016 vote, per the report.
“Not only did CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, DNI [James] Clapper and others include the Steele Dossier in the 2017 ICA, they overruled senior Intel officials who warned them it was fabricated and should not be used,” Gabbard said, calling the move “the most egregious weaponization and politicization of intelligence in American history.”
“In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people, working with their partners in the media to promote the lie, in order to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump, essentially enacting a years-long coup against him,” she added.
“The Russia Hoax was a lie that was knowingly created by the Obama Administration to undermine the legitimacy and power of the duly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump.”
According to the House committee, led by then-Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), only a “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.”
“CIA officers said that some of this information had been held on the orders of [Brennan], while other reporting had been judged by experienced CIA officers to have not met longstanding publication standards,” the report noted.
The withheld statements included comments from a “longtime Putin confidant” who claimed the Russian president “told him he did not care who won the election,” “had often outlined the weaknesses of both major candidates,” and that “Russia was strategically placed to outmaneuver either [Clinton or Trump].”
Other information was “unclear, of uncertain origin, potentially biased, implausible, or in the words of senior operations officers ‘odd,’” the report also stated, and was “published after the election — over the objections of veteran officers — on orders of DCIA [Brennan] and cited in the ICA to support claims that Putin aspired to help Trump win.”
Trump raged against Obama on Tuesday after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified records disclosing that the 44th president directed spy chiefs at a Dec. 9, 2016, Oval Office meeting to produce the January 2017 ICA.
“It’s criminal at the highest level,” Trump fumed of his predecessor. “He’s guilty … This was treason, this was every word you could think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.”
Clapper’s assistant had emailed spy agency leaders later the same day asking for an assessment “per the President’s request” to describe “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.”
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” responded Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for Obama, on Tuesday.
“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” Rodenbush said.
“Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”
That report found that “Russia launched a large-scale influence campaign in the 2016 election in order to help then-candidate Donald Trump,” according to Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.)
Tulsi Gabbard’s Russiagate claims
Tulsi Gabbard’s claims of election interference focus on the controversial 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which former president Barack Obama ordered his intel chiefs to compile.
The report fueled the Russiagate investigations against President Trump. Gabbard alleges it amounted to a political hit-job, claiming Obama officials knowingly used shaky intel and then lied about it.
Gabbard’s new claims are based on a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, which she has publicly released. Its findings differ in some key ways from both the Obama report and a previously released Senate Intelligence Committee report.
Democrats, however, point to the Senate report, which was backed by then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — now Trump’s secretary of state. That supports some of the findings of the Obama report.
Here are the biggest points — and what the dueling intel reports say:
The Steele Dossier
- The House report contradicts the claims of Obama officials that they never relied on the discredited Steele Dossier — which was compiled by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — as part of the Russiagate investigation.
- In a 2017 House hearing, Obama’s CIA director John Brennan denied that his agency used the Steele dossier for intelligence assessments.
- However, the full Steele Dossier was still included as an attachment to the Obama intel report, the newly public House report found
- Additionally, according to the House report, Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe pushed to use the Steele dossier for the Obama intel report
- Senior intel officials also confronted Brennan about the legitimacy of the Steele Dossier, the House report said, but he shrugged it off. Brennan’s response was reportedly, “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?”
- The Senate investigation found that the Steele Dossier was not used as part of the Obama intel report
Obama’s involvement
- Gabbard claimed Wednesday that Obama ordered the creation of the 2017 intel report and suggested it “was subject to unusual directives directly from the president and senior political appointees.” She added: “Obama directed an intelligence community assessment to be created, to further this contrived false narrative that ultimately led to a year-long coup to try to undermine President Trump’s presidency.”
- The 2020 Senate intel report confirmed that Obama ordered the report to be drafted, but did not comment on the political motivations.
- Obama said, “the bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
Did Putin want Trump to win?
- The Obama report said that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability” and that Putin had a “clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
- But the House report contradicted this, saying that Putin’s “principal motivations in these operations were to undermine faith in the US democratic process.” The Russian strongman also seemed to expect Clinton to win, and held back on “some compromising material for post-election use against the expected Clinton administration.”
- The Senate report said that lawmakers were given “specific intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government demonstrated a preference for candidate Trump.”
Did Russia alter the 2016 election?
- To buttress her claims that the Obama intel report was political interference, she highlighted the findings of multiple intelligence agencies that Russia “had neither the intent nor capability to impact the outcome of the US election.”
- On this, all three reports are in agreement
“The desperate and irresponsible 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,” Warner said in a statement Wednesday.
“And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us,” he added.
“Nothing in this partisan, previously scuttled document changes that. Releasing this so-called report is just another reckless act by a Director of National Intelligence so desperate to please Donald Trump that she is willing to risk classified sources, betray our allies, and politicize the very intelligence she has been entrusted to protect.”
However, the Senate panel admitted it “does not know with confidence” what Moscow’s intentions were in directing attacks on election infrastructure but added the Kremlin “may have sought to undermine confidence” in the 2016 election.
“The Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure at the state and local level,” the report stated.
“The Committee has seen no evidence that any votes were changed or that any voting machines were manipulated.”
The Senate report, which runs more than 1,000 pages, included interviews with more than 200 witnesses and a review of millions of documents, had already revealed there were internal “objections” to the Steele dossier and it was put into the ICA with a note of it having “limited corroboration.”
“In early December [2016], President Obama tasked the IC with a comprehensive assessment of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election. FBI–particularly Deputy Director Andy McCabe–requested that the dossier information be included in the assessment, pointing to the President’s request for comprehensiveness,” the report stated.
“CIA analysts pushed back on FBI’ s request, seeing the memos as uncorroborated and questioning the sourcing. All three primary author agencies eventually compromised on summarizing the allegations in an annex to the assessment.”
Comey — who ended up giving Trump a one-on-one briefing of the ICA’s contents after the 45th president assumed office — also received a memo concerning the Steele dossier on Dec. 9, 2016, the same day as the high-level meeting between Obama, Brennan, Clapper and McCabe on Russian interference in the election.
The Senate report also “found that Russia’s goal in its unprecedented hack-and-leak operation against the United States in 2016, among other motives, was to assist the Trump Campaign.”
That included a spear phishing campaign by the Kremlin’s military intelligence service that accessed email accounts of members of the Clinton campaign and networks at the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Candidate Trump and his Campaign responded to that threat,” the report concluded, “by embracing, encouraging, and exploiting the Russian effort.”
