President Trump’s own political appointees played a crucial role in sustaining the fraudulent Russiagate narrative crafted by the Obama administration, according to an extensive Real Clear Investigations report.
The article exposes how former Special Counsel John Durham, National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and CIA Director Gina Haspel either concealed or ignored critical intelligence that debunked the foundation of the Russiagate hoax—the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).
“When Obama administration officials manufactured U.S. intelligence tying Donald Trump to Moscow following his stunning 2016 victory, they had no idea Trump’s own political appointees would help them undermine Trump’s presidency – and his chances of reelection in 2020. RCI’s review of recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews with former Trump officials reveals for the first time how key members of Trump’s cabinet and other appointees during his first term shrouded the previous administration’s machinations and either deliberately or inadvertently misled the public into thinking the fake Russiagate intelligence was real. Former Special Counsel John Durham, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former CIA Director Gina Haspel dismissed or buried evidence that cast doubt on a foundational document of the Russigate hoax – the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) prepared in the waning days of the Obama administration.” – [Real Clear Investigations]
The ICA falsely claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized efforts to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election, backing its explosive claims primarily on a vague, unverifiable intelligence fragment and heavily relying on the Steele dossier—a Clinton campaign-funded document rife with baseless accusations.
“Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr, stopped the declassification and release of key exculpatory evidence debunking the ICA on the eve of the 2020 election, which has not been reported previously. The ICA helped frame the false narrative, which led to multiple espionage investigations that dogged Trump throughout his first term: that Russian President Vladimir Putin had authorized dirty tricks to help Trump win the 2016 election. A 2018 government review of that document, which was chiefly prepared by Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and his National Intelligence Director James Clapper, found that its most explosive claims were based on ‘one scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard [intelligence] reports,’ according to a recently declassified report that Trump administration and, later, Biden administration officials had helped keep locked away in a CIA vault. It also cited as supporting intelligence debunked political dirt paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” – [RealClearInvestigations]
Key figures within Trump’s administration concealed these findings from him, allowing the false narrative to fester.
“The suppression can be traced back at least until mid-2018. That’s when Fred Fleitz, who was National Security Adviser John Bolton’s chief of staff, heard that investigators at his former employer, the House Intelligence Committee, were probing the raw intelligence in the ICA supporting the assessment’s key judgments. Fleitz told RealClearInvestigations that he was startled to learn that the investigators discovered numerous intelligence documents showing the ICA’s key conclusion – that Russia ‘developed a clear preference’ for Trump and ‘aspired to help’ him win the election – was based on shoddy and fabricated intelligence. House investigators found those assessments were supported in part by the Steele dossier, a series of Clinton campaign-funded reports containing baseless accusations linking Trump to the Kremlin compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Fleitz thought Bolton should be briefed on the unpublished House report, which undermined the prevailing narrative that Trump and Moscow had colluded during the 2016 election campaign. When he returned to his West Wing office, Fleitz sat down at his classified computer and wrote a synopsis of the review and gave it to his boss. But Bolton did not, in turn, brief the president. ‘He didn’t do anything with it. He never told Trump, and I never heard anything about it again,’ Fleitz told RCI.” – [Real Clear Investigations]
At the CIA, Pompeo was skeptical about the investigation results but actively hindered congressional probing, while his deputy Gina Haspel rigorously limited investigators’ access to key intelligence records.
“Pompeo’s deputy at the time was Gina Haspel, who appears to have played a much more active role in drawing a veil over the information… Sources told RCI she made sure the investigators’ on-site examination, which spanned from 2017 to 2020, was closely monitored and tightly controlled. The House investigators had to be cleared into a ‘read room’ at Langley each day to examine the records the CIA used to support the ICA. And they were forced to lock up their laptops and materials there when they left at night. ‘Haspel didn’t allow them to take even their notes out of their workspace there,’ Harvey said. ‘They couldn’t take anything out of the building.’ Another House Intelligence Committee source familiar with the operation said the investigators suspected the CIA ‘was spying on [committee] computers’ back on Capitol Hill. They reported back to then-committee chairman Devin Nunes that the CIA had tampered with the computers the agency forced them to use to draft their report inside headquarters – and this was only after they were denied access to any computers in the first four months of their oversight investigation… ‘Deliberate technical modifications to the [CIA-issued] computers made the machines unstable and unreliable,’ which slowed down investigators’ work, according to a committee report documenting the CIA’s efforts to ‘obstruct’ their probe.” – [Real Clear Investigations]
Before leaving office in January 2021, Haspel locked all drafts and notes of the House Intelligence Committee’s report debunking the ICA in a CIA gun safe and demanded it remain classified, ensuring the truth stayed hidden until after the 2020 election.
Special Counsel Durham, appointed to investigate the origins of Russiagate, chose not to declassify critical reports and seemingly ignored abundant evidence.
“In 2020, however, Durham insisted the ICA review be kept under wraps. Durham argued he was using the secret report, drafted by two career House Intelligence Committee investigators, in his inquiry into whether the FBI and CIA had politicized and weaponized intel against Trump. ‘Durham specifically asked for that report to not be declassified and released, along with other things, because he wanted to use it as part of his investigation and prosecutions – or so we presumed,’ the former senior ODNI intelligence official familiar with Ratcliffe’s declassification effort said. Ratcliffe, now CIA director, initially agreed to withhold the report, which remained buried for the next five years – until Trump’s new National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard declassified and publicly released it virtually unredacted in July. ‘After we gave Durham the report, along with over a thousand pages of other classified documents, he went ghost,’ said the former senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ‘We didn’t hear from him, and he didn’t appear to do anything with the report.'” – [Real Clear Investigations]
The now-declassified ICA report has become pivotal evidence in criminal investigations into Obama-era intelligence officials, including Brennan and Clapper, who are accused of orchestrating the false narrative designed to subvert Trump’s presidency.
“The declassified ICA is now being used as evidence in criminal probes of Obama-era figures, including Brennan, by the Justice Department. Prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida, who are reportedly trying to build a conspiracy of corruption case, recently issued a flurry of grand jury subpoenas targeting Brennan and Clapper, former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and other Obama-era officials who were involved in the crafting of the ICA. They seek communications records and other documents covering the 2016-2017 period when classified versions of the assessment were drafted and an unclassified version was released to the public.” – [Real Clear Investigations]
These revelations illustrate that the Russiagate hoax was not merely a flaw of the previous administration but was abetted and concealed by members of Trump’s own team, undermining his presidency and manipulating the 2020 election’s outcome.
