Patel and Ratcliffe try to bolster claims that FBI and CIA conspired against Trump

NBC News

a day ago

The release of formerly classified FBI and CIA documents this week illustrates how President Donald Trump's appointees at both agencies are trying to use the levers of government to prop up his long-standing assertions that intelligence agencies conspired against him.
The FBI released emails on Tuesday that purport to show an effort by the bureau's leaders in 2020 to cover up a source's claim that there was a Chinese plot to throw the presidential election to Joe Biden. In a statement to the Daily Mail, Trump's FBI director, Kash Patel, said the emails reveal that bureau leaders 'chose to play politics and withhold key information from the American people.'
And CIA Director John Ratcliffe released an internal agency analysis related to the 2020 election that he argue d showed that Democratic appointees 'manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals — all to get Trump.'
Patel's and Ratcliffe's claims went beyond the information contained in the released documents. The documents do not describe definitive evidence that any official acted out of political motive or engaged in anything beyond the good-faith debate that is typical of the intelligence verification and analysis process.
The emails do show that at least one FBI official raised the concern that the report conflicted with congressional testimony at the time by Director Christopher Wray, who said the FBI was not aware of any Chinese attempt to interfere in the presidential election. A former FBI official told NBC News that Wray does not recall being made aware of the report.
A former senior FBI official said he was not aware of the report either. The former official, who requested anonymity, noted that the bureau produces hundreds of reports every day based on such tips, which do not always pan out.
Patel also promoted an article by the right-wing journalist John Solomon than mentioned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection had seized fake licenses that were arriving mostly from China and Hong Kong around the time the FBI received the tip.
According to a 2020 news release from CBP, 20,000 fake licenses were seized in Chicago between January and June. It said 'most were for college-age students,' a population that has historically sought licenses with fake birthdays so underage students can purchase alcohol.
Dozens of judges, including Trump appointees, have found no evidence of widespread or systemic voter fraud affecting the 2020 election, despite allegations promoted by Trump and his allies since he lost that year's presidential race.
The day after Patel released the emails, though, Trump appeared to mention them during a press conference where he talked about 'China and the license plates' and claimed that 'tens of thousands of cards' were used to vote in the 2020 election.
Concerns about reliability of tip
The emails released by Patel offer a window into the deep concern among senior career FBI analysts about an intelligence report from an agent in the Albany field office based on a single, unvetted source making a historic allegation: that the Chinese government sent thousands of fake IDs to help people fraudulently vote for Biden.
The report was ultimately withdrawn over concerns about its veracity. Two FBI officials familiar with the matter told NBC News that the tip was not credible intelligence and never should have been sent out in an intelligence report.
The CIA analysis cited by Ratcliffe found procedural faults with how the agency crafted its assessment that Russia tried to denigrate Hillary Clinton and help Trump get elected in 2016. But it didn't question that broad conclusion — one echoed by two exhaustive congressional investigations.
Yet Trump appointees and allies quickly argued the documents vindicated Trump's long-running claims that he had been wronged by intelligence agencies investigating foreign election interference.
The CIA review found that 'Obama's Trump-Russia collusion report was corrupt from start,' read the headline of a New York Post piece by conservative columnist Miranda Devine.
A press release from the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said the 'bombshell' FBI emails showed 'FBI headquarters interfered with [an] alleged Chinese election interference probe' to shield then-Director Christopher Wray 'from political blowback.'
A new unnamed source
The FBI emails show that senior career public servants at the bureau had concerns about the reliability of information from a confidential human source who claimed that the Chinese Communist Party planned to use fake IDs to cast ballots for Biden in the 2020 election.
The information came from a source that an FBI agent based in Albany, New York, had just met, who in turn got it from a separate unnamed source. The emails say the source in Albany also repeated a claim made on social media that the Chinese government was intentionally spreading Covid in the U.S. — an allegation that has never been corroborated. One email released by the FBI said the information had not been verified through other intelligence-gathering methods.
The emails say top bureau intelligence analysts Nikki Floris and Tonya Ugoretz ordered the intelligence report recalled because it lacked corroboration. Floris was forced out of the FBI earlier this year, and Ugoretz — who was promoted to become the FBI's top intelligence official — was recently placed on leave. The FBI has not said why. Floris and Ugoretz did not respond to requests for comment.
The emails lay out an internal debate over the reliability of the intelligence, which former FBI agents say is typical. The Albany office, backing its agent, sought to prevent the report from being recalled. Senior FBI officials, meanwhile, pushed for corroboration of the source's allegations.
In a Sept. 25, 2020, email, an assistant section chief in the Criminal Intelligence Branch said the claim about Chinese election interference was 'getting a lot of attention from all HQ divisions.'
The assistant section chief added, 'We know that the source is first contact and hasn't been re-interviewed. Are you considering recalling the [intelligence report] until you can track the source down and re-interview? Everything election is getting scrutiny, and we just want to be sure we have reliable sourcing.'
In a Sept. 28 email, another official noted that the allegation that China was trying to influence the election in favor of Biden, as well as previous seizures of fake driver's licenses imported from China, 'were all documented in some fashion on open sources.'
The official added that 'Given the lack of specifics we received in the initial reporting, my first opinion was that the [confidential human source] wants to help and is probably supplementing his reporting via open sources.'
Ultimately, the emails show, an FBI official who specializes in Chinese foreign interference instructed the Albany office that 'we have not approved a re-issue' of the report 'specifically because of our concerns that the reporting is not authoritative.'
Election denier at FBI
The new head of the FBI's Office of Congressional Affairs is Marshall Yates. A former Republican aide on Capitol Hill, Yates has ties to figures that have long backed Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Yates was chief of staff to former Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., on Jan. 6, 2021, when Brooks spoke at Trump's rally in support of efforts to overturn his election loss. Yates then went on to work for the Election Integrity Network, a project headed by Republican lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a key figure in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
In a 2022 speech in New Mexico, Yates said the 'election objection did not go as we wanted in 2020, on Jan. 6,' but that 'luckily' it had 'sparked a grassroots movement across the country for election integrity.' Yates did not respond to a request for comment.
The FBI declined a request for comment regarding Yates' involvement or Patel's statements about the emails.
A nuanced CIA analysis
The internal review released by Ratcliffe last week examined how the CIA put together a 2017 intelligence assessment that concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
The review found some deviance from standard procedures, but it defended the assessment's overall findings. The report disclosed that two senior leaders of a CIA mission center focusing on Russia objected to the conclusion that Russia's goal was to help secure Trump's victory but agreed that Putin hoped to denigrate Clinton and undermine the U.S. democratic process.
The review also cited complaints by some CIA officers that they felt rushed by a tight deadline to produce the assessment. The CIA director at the time, John Brennan, was a Democratic political appointee who has since become an ardent Trump critic.
In a second post on X, Ratcliffe argued that the complaints about the process were evidence the 'assessment was conducted through an atypical & corrupt process under the politically charged environments' of Brennan and then-FBI Director James Comey. The CIA declined to comment when asked to explain the basis for Ratcliffe's accusation.
A special counsel appointed during the first Trump administration looked extensively into how the CIA crafted its assessment but filed no criminal charges and reported no clear evidence that political bias tainted the process. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation in 2020 concurred with the 2017 intelligence assessment and found no reason to dispute its conclusions.