New CIA report criticizes investigation into Russia's support for Trump in 2016
The memo was written on the orders of CIA Director John Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist who spoke out against the Russia investigation as a member of Congress. It finds fault with a 2017 intelligence assessment that concluded the Russian government, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin, waged a covert influence campaign to help Trump win.
It does not address that multiple investigations since then, including a report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, reached the same conclusion about Russia's influence and motives.
The eight-page document is part of an ongoing effort by Trump and close allies who now lead key government agencies to revisit the history of the long-concluded Russia investigation, which resulted in criminal indictments and shadowed most of his first term but also produced unresolved grievances and contributed to the Republican president's deep-rooted suspicions of the intelligence community .
The report is also the latest effort by Ratcliffe to challenge the decision-making and actions of intelligence agencies during the course of the Russia investigation.
A vocal Trump supporter in Congress who aggressively questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller during his 2019 testimony on Russian election interference, Ratcliffe later used his position as director of national intelligence to declassify Russian intelligence alleging damaging information about Democrats during the 2016 election even as he acknowledged that it might not be true.
The new, 'lessons-learned' review ordered by Ratcliffe in May was meant to examine the tradecraft that went into the intelligence community's 2017 assessment on Russian interference and to scrutinize in particular the conclusion that Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win.
The report cited several 'anomalies' that the authors wrote could have affected that conclusion, including a rushed timeline and a reliance on unconfirmed information, such as Democratic-funded opposition research about Trump's ties to Russia compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele .
The report takes particular aim at the inclusion of a two-page summary of the Steele dossier, which included salacious and uncorroborated rumors about Trump's ties to Russia, in an annex of the intelligence community assessment. It said that decision, championed by the FBI, 'implicitly elevated unsubstantiated claims to the status of credible supporting evidence, compromising the analytical integrity of the judgment.'
But even as Ratcliffe faulted top intelligence officials for a 'politically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process,' his agency's report does not directly contradict any previous intelligence.
Russia's support for Trump has been outlined in a number of intelligence reports and the August 2020 conclusions of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio , who now serves as Trump's secretary of state. It also was backed by Mueller, who in his 2019 report said that Russia interfered on Trump's behalf and that the campaign welcomed the aid even if there was insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy.
'This report doesn't change any of the underlying evidence — in fact it doesn't even address any of that evidence,' said Brian Taylor, a Russia expert who directs the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University.
Taylor suggested the report may have been intended to reinforce Trump's claims that investigations into his ties to Russia are part of a Democratic hoax.
'Good intelligence analysts will tell you their job is to speak truth to power,' Taylor said. 'If they tell the leader what he wants to hear, you often get flawed intelligence.'
Intelligence agencies regularly perform after-action reports to learn from past operations and investigations, but it's uncommon for the evaluations to be declassified and released to the public.
Ratcliffe has said he wants to release material on a number of topics of public debate and has already declassified records relating to the assassinations of President John Kennedy and his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy , as well as the origins of COVID-19 .
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
3 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Vice President JD Vance is on the road again to sell the Republicans' big new tax law
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Vice President JD Vance is hitting his home state on Monday to continue promoting the GOP's sweeping tax-and-border bill. He will be in Canton, Ohio, to talk about the bill's 'benefits for hardworking American families and businesses,' according to his office. Aides offered little detail in advance about the visit, but NBC News reported that his remarks will take place at a steel plant in Canton, located about 60 miles south of Cleveland.
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Vice President JD Vance is on the road again to sell the Republicans' big new tax law
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Vice President JD Vance is hitting his home state on Monday to continue promoting the GOP's sweeping tax-and-border bill. He will be in Canton, Ohio, to talk about the bill's 'benefits for hardworking American families and businesses,' according to his office. Aides offered little detail in advance about the visit, but NBC News reported that his remarks will take place at a steel plant in Canton, located about 60 miles south of Cleveland. The visit marks Vance's second trip this month to sell the package, filled with a hodgepodge of conservative priorities that Republicans have dubbed the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' as the vice president becomes its chief promoter on the road. In West Pittston, Pennsylvania, Vance told attendees at an industrial machine shop that they should be able to keep more of their pay in their pockets, highlighting the law's new tax deductions on overtime. Vance also discussed a new children's savings program called Trump Accounts and how the new law promotes energy extraction, while decrying Democrats for opposing the bill that keeps the current tax rates, which would have otherwise expired later this year. The legislation cleared the GOP-controlled Congress by the narrowest of margins, with Vance breaking a tie vote in the Senate for the package that also sets aside hundreds of billions of dollars for Trump's immigration agenda while slashing Medicaid and food stamps. The vice president is also stepping up his public relations blitz on the bill as the White House tries to deflect attention away from the growing controversy over Jeffrey Epstein. The disgraced financier killed himself, authorities say, in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. Trump and his top allies stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein's death before Trump returned to the White House and are now reckoning with the consequences of a Justice Department announcement earlier this month that Epstein did indeed die by suicide and that no further documents about the case would be released. Questions about the case continued to dog Trump in Scotland, where he on Sunday announced a framework trade deal with the European Union. Asked about the timing of the trade announcement and the Epstein case and whether it was correlated, Trump responded: 'You got to be kidding with that." 'No, had nothing to do with it,' Trump told the reporter. 'Only you would think that." The White House sees the new law as a clear political boon, sending Vance to promote it in swing congressional districts that will determine whether Republicans retain their House majority next year. The northeastern Pennsylvania stop is in the district represented by Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a first-term lawmaker who knocked off a six-time Democratic incumbent last fall. On Monday, Vance will be in the district of Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes, who is a top target for the National Republican Congressional Committee this cycle. Polls before the bill's passage showed that it largely remained unpopular, although the public approves of some individual provisions such as increasing the child tax credit and allowing workers to deduct more of their tips on taxes.
Associated Press
33 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Vice President JD Vance is on the road again to sell the Republicans' big new tax law
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Vice President JD Vance is hitting his home state on Monday to continue promoting the GOP's sweeping tax-and-border bill. He will be in Canton, Ohio, to talk about the bill's 'benefits for hardworking American families and businesses,' according to his office. Aides offered little detail in advance about the visit, but NBC News reported that his remarks will take place at a steel plant in Canton, located about 60 miles south of Cleveland. The visit marks Vance's second trip this month to sell the package, filled with a hodgepodge of conservative priorities that Republicans have dubbed the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' as the vice president becomes its chief promoter on the road. In West Pittston, Pennsylvania, Vance told attendees at an industrial machine shop that they should be able to keep more of their pay in their pockets, highlighting the law's new tax deductions on overtime. Vance also discussed a new children's savings program called Trump Accounts and how the new law promotes energy extraction, while decrying Democrats for opposing the bill that keeps the current tax rates, which would have otherwise expired later this year. The legislation cleared the GOP-controlled Congress by the narrowest of margins, with Vance breaking a tie vote in the Senate for the package that also sets aside hundreds of billions of dollars for Trump's immigration agenda while slashing Medicaid and food stamps. The vice president is also stepping up his public relations blitz on the bill as the White House tries to deflect attention away from the growing controversy over Jeffrey Epstein. The disgraced financier killed himself, authorities say, in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. Trump and his top allies stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein's death before Trump returned to the White House and are now reckoning with the consequences of a Justice Department announcement earlier this month that Epstein did indeed die by suicide and that no further documents about the case would be released. Questions about the case continued to dog Trump in Scotland, where he on Sunday announced a framework trade deal with the European Union. Asked about the timing of the trade announcement and the Epstein case and whether it was correlated, Trump responded: 'You got to be kidding with that.' 'No, had nothing to do with it,' Trump told the reporter. 'Only you would think that.' The White House sees the new law as a clear political boon, sending Vance to promote it in swing congressional districts that will determine whether Republicans retain their House majority next year. The northeastern Pennsylvania stop is in the district represented by Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a first-term lawmaker who knocked off a six-time Democratic incumbent last fall. On Monday, Vance will be in the district of Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes, who is a top target for the National Republican Congressional Committee this cycle. Polls before the bill's passage showed that it largely remained unpopular, although the public approves of some individual provisions such as increasing the child tax credit and allowing workers to deduct more of their tips on taxes.
