"A new report by the CIA makes clear that its prior leader sought to “frame” President Donald Trump with slanted conclusions in the Russia collusion hoax, one legal analyst wrote on Wednesday.
Attorney Gregg Jarrett agreed with current CIA Director John Ratcliffe that “political motive” played a role in former Director John Brennan’s intervention in a 2016 report exploring baseless connections between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives to influence the election. Ratcliffe last week released a bombshell report claiming that Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and other “political appointees” went to great lengths to include the discredited Steele dossier in their original report about Russiagate.Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, was hired by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, to investigate rumors of connections between Trump and Russia. It has been alleged by Trump and allies that much of his unverified intelligence came from Bruce Ohr, a former U.S. Justice Department official married to Nellie Ohr, who worked for Fusion GPS at the time of the election.
“The dossier was garbage, of course. The FBI largely debunked it before Trump was even sworn in and fired its author, Christopher Steele, for lying as a confidential human source. But the bureau concealed those inconvenient facts under then-Director James Comey and deftly exploited the document as a cudgel to bludgeon the newly elected president,” Jarrett writes.
Brennan, Comey, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “plotted to smear Trump with what is surely the dirtiest trick in political history,” he adds.
Revelations from Ratcliffe’s report include new assertions that Brennan pushed aside career CIA agents who were doubtful about the connection between Trump and Russia. The report also claims that Brennan siloed off drafts of the report in the CIA, preventing the National Security Council and other intelligence agencies from contributing their own contradictory evidence.
“The CIA’s deputy director for analysis warned Brennan in writing that including the discredited dossier in any capacity jeopardized ‘the credibility of the entire paper.’ Brennan didn’t care. The fiction penned by the ex-British spy conformed to the director’s preconceived fable that Trump colluded with Russia,” Jarrett goes on.
In 2023, special counsel John Durham concluded that no such connection between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian assets ever existed.
On Tuesday, the FBI announced it has launched a criminal investigation into Brennan, who critics accused of lying to Congress in 2019 when he claimed that the Steele dossier was “not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment.” Clapper, who may be investigated as part of the probe, gave nearly identical testimony, according to Jarrett."
TP

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