Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
.-') _ .-') _
( OO ) ) ( OO ) )
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,'
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | )
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--'
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
New CIA report criticizes investigation into Russia’s support for
Trump in 2016
Associated Press
Updated:
7:32 AM EDT, Thu July 3, 2025
Source: AP
A declassified CIA memo released Wednesday challenges the work
intelligence agencies did to conclude that Russia interfered in the
2016 presidential election because it wanted Republican Donald Trump to
win.
The 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 .
It does not address that multiple investigations since then, including
a report from the Republican-led 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 , 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 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 relating to the assassinations of President
John Kennedy and his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the
origins of COVID-19.
<- back to index
You are viewing proxied material from codevoid.de. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.